


Earthbound Creatures

by IneffableToreshi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Demons, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Idiots in Love, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Prophecy, Romance, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens), and some people want to ruin that, no betas I throw myself to the wolves, they're idiots you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2020-10-24 12:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableToreshi/pseuds/IneffableToreshi
Summary: In burning Agnes Nutter's second book of prophecies, Anathema and Newt discover a mysterious page that refuses to go up in flame. Atop it is written a poem which neither, at that time, can hope to understand.Something is happening, wheels are turning, and neither Heaven nor Hell are wont to forgive and forget. An Angel and a Demon are very much in danger of losing one another.





	1. Prologue - One Last Prophecy

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely certain where this idea came from, but it just kinda popped into my head at work today, and the next thing I knew I found myself scribbling out ideas for a prophecy. I only have bits and pieces thought out so far, so please bear with me as I work it all out! I expect to, possibly, have a chapter per paragraph of the prophecy, but possibly more if certain parts turn out far too long. 
> 
> I'll keep adding tags and adjusting things as I figure out exactly what I'm planning to do (for example, I'm not certain as to whether or not I'm going to include any sexy-fun-times yet :P). 
> 
> Also, please excuse my attempt at poetry. It's never really been my thing, but for some reason I felt the prophecy would sound cooler as a poem. Feel free to poke fun at me. :3
> 
> Comments give me life, so please let me know what you think of this prologue!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

**The Day After the World Didn't End...**

It was a lovely morning, followed by a day that was eventful for some and quite uneventful for others, closed off by a properly beautiful evening. 

In the small town of Tadfield, a boy and his dog were running off together to enjoy the last delicate wisps of an unforgettable summer, and as they went off over the beautiful fields that the boy loved so dearly, they waved to a witch and a witchfinder who sat burning a book. 

It wasn't just any book with which they stoked their little pit of flames. It was one of a kind, an original manuscript, in fact, but one that they had decided, together, would not grace the hands of man. 

Anathema Device shivered a little as she watched the pages curl and smoke. It was one of the most frustrating things about being human, she thought: feeling as though you could be doing something very right and very wrong all at the same time. 

Newton Pulsifer leaned a little closer to her, permanently nervous but in love all the same, and let their shoulders press together. "No use having second thoughts now," he pointed out. "It's well and truly gone."

Anathema took a deep breath and let it sigh back out from her lips as she tilted her head to lean against the love her ancestor had prophesied she would meet. "Yes, no turning back now. It's all gone," she agreed. And, after a moment or two, added, "Except for that one page that hasn't even caught."

Newt had tilted his head toward the scent of her hair, so it was quite excusable how his response came several beats too late. "Wait, what?"

They stared into the flames together, he in bewilderment, she with a grim, knowing look. 

A single page sat at the heart of the fire, the pristine, unburnt cream parchment looking up at them as if with defiance. _ Can't get rid of me that easily! _

"You can't-" Newt sputtered, turning to stare at Anathema. "You absolutely _ can't _ tell me that Agnes knew we would burn the book and did something to this one page. After everything else, I don't think I could handle it."

But the witch was frowning, eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't put it past her," she admitted, "but consider when she lived. What would she have had access to that she could have fireproofed a sheet of parchment and kept it preserved that way for over three hundred years?" She considered the fire carefully. "No...something about this feels...strange."

Newt snorted. "Everything else _ wasn't _strange?"

Anathema ignored him and reached tentatively toward the flames, causing the anxious young man to cry out and snatch up her wrist. 

"What are you doing?!" 

"I...I don't think it will burn me."

She reached out with the other hand more quickly, eliciting a further yelp from Newt, and grabbed the sheet from the fire without suffering anything more than a pleasant lick of warmth. Newt's jaw dropped. Then his hand went to his face so he could remove his glasses and press a few fingers to his head. 

"I give up," he muttered.

Anathema stared intently at the sheet of parchment. While laying in the fire it had seemed quite blank which would have, of course, been quite unlikely. Why fireproof a _ blank _ sheet of parchment, after all? But once the encapsulating heat of the fire met the cool, soft caress of the evening air, words began to appear as if written in invisible ink. 

Most of the prophecies Anathema had devoted her life to were less than a few sentences. At a stretch, some of them could have been called paragraphs. This, however- 

"It's a poem," said the witch. 

The witchfinder had since replaced his glasses and heaved a truly put-upon sigh. "Go on then," he told her. 

Instead she turned to him with something like indecision in her eyes. "I really _ don't _ want to be a descendant my entire life," she assured Newt. "I _ burned the book _."

Newt forced himself to relax (just a bit) and offered her one of his adorably nervous smiles. "I know, I was there," he teased. "And I think it's great. I'm really proud of you, honestly. But we both know that you're not just going to ignore a prophetic poem written in magic ink on a centuries-old sheet of parchment that is impervious to flame. So…" He waved a hand at the poem as if to say, 'get on with it then'. 

Anathema frowned at first, but in the end her face softened and she leaned forward to place a little kiss on the corner of Newt's mouth, making him turn red from the neck up. 

And then she turned and read the poem aloud.

** _"When Dark meets Light 'neath falling sky_ **

** _The Trick unveiled, deceptions seen_ **

** _A plot to bring cruel death to worlds_ **

** _Within the minds of lovers' dreams_ **

** _Hearts once one, ripped back to two_ **

** _A balance torn asunder here_ **

** _Will split the skies and shake the lands_ **

** _That once for both were held so dear_ **

** _Search ye, young ones, the horsemens' grave_ **

** _Two souls within a wall of stone_ **

** _Awaken they whose loyalty gave_ **

** _To earthbound creatures gifts unknown_ **

** _Should two to one unite once more_ **

** _White to Black and Black to White_ **

** _Forever changed their Fates will be_ **

** _Beheld to neither Dark nor Light_ **

** _So heed ye Light, and heed ye Dark_ **

** _Though great of might ye armies be_ **

** _True strength is lost amongst them both_ **

** _So Look and Listen, Hear and See"_ **

Anathema's voice faded with the last words, her eyes fixated on the page in her hands. Newton watched her eyes for a moment, then glanced at the page, then back at her, and counted to twenty before fairly exploding. 

"Well what the bloody hell does all that mean?"

Anathema slowly shook her head, her gaze never leaving the page. "I have absolutely no idea.

But it sounds like it's going to be big."


	2. Contentment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley struggles with why a feeling of contentment has sent him into a full-blown panic. Aziraphale struggles with an inability to properly feel and understand the demon's emotional readings. A date beneath the stars results and two shadowy figures plot revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, after the relative tease that was the prologue chapter, it's finally time to get into the meat of the story! I wrote this chapter entirely by hand during breaks at work, and just finished transcribing it, so please let me know if there are any major errors/typos/etc. :) 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _"When Dark meets Light 'neath falling sky_ **

** _The Trick unveiled, deceptions seen"_**

* * *

Anthony J. Crowley didn't think he had ever been so content.

No, scratch that. The demon named Crowley was _ certain _ that he had never been so content. He'd had mild bouts of contentment throughout the ages. On one or two very rare occasions he'd even been something that was frighteningly close to _ happy _ . But in his entire existence as a demon, including the more-than-6000-years he had spent on Earth, Crowley had never felt so wonderfully, blissfully, enchantingly _ content. _

It scared the Heaven right out of him.

A bit more than a year had passed since a group of humans and two woefully incompetent celestial beings had managed to thwart the Apocalypse. It had also, therefore, been the same amount of time (less a day) since Crowley and the angel Aziraphale had swapped bodies and managed to thwart their respective sides' attempts to dispose of them, permanently. Since then the demon (who was just a little bit a good person) and the angel (who was just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing) had been free agents, given a wide berth by Heaven and Hell who were, quite frankly, a bit terrified to approach them again.

All of that was, in and of itself, an excellent bit of reasoning to explain a sense of contentment, but it didn't fully explain why Crowley was _ content _.

The moment Crowley realized that he was _ content _ was at about 6:36 am on the morning of October the 7th, 2020. He'd been snoozing comfortably on the couch in the back of Aziraphale's bookshop, having spent the previous night there, drinking wine and having a few laughs about anything and everything (and sometimes, nothing at all). 

As the demon drifted back to relative consciousness it occurred to him that he was in a far deeper level of comfort than Aziraphale's ratty old couch generally provided. He was, in fact, wrapped in something warm and delightfully soft, and his head was perfectly cushioned in something that felt ridiculously close a literal cloud. Very close to where he lay he could smell fresh, hot coffee with just the slightest hint of dark chocolate and whipped cream. And, somewhere a little further away but still close enough to be soothing, there was the sound of pages being turned under the delicate ministrations of an angel's hand.

Crowley slithered from the downy tartan blanket like a snake emerging from hibernation and propped himself on one elbow on the (yes, very cloud-like) white pillow that had been slipped under his head. He blinked sleep-filled amber eyes and yawned overly-wide, while running long fingers through disheveled, fiery-red hair. "Mornin', angel," he murmured.

Aziraphale looked up from his favorite armchair, where he was thumbing through a rather ancient-looking tome, and flashed the demon a truly radiant smile. "Good morning, dear. I trust you slept well? It's a bit chilly and dreary this morning so I thought you'd appreciate a little bit of a mocha modification to your usual coffee."

Crowley leaned over the steaming mug on the table next to him (kept at the perfect temperature by a small miracle, he expected) and drew in a deep breath. He had to admit that it smelled, well...Heavenly. The thought should have made him gag, but because it came from Aziraphale it only made a hint of a smile creep onto his face.

"Thanksss, angel," he let a hint of snake flit through before yawning again. He snatched up his morning treat and took a sip. It _ was _ Heavenly. Crowley hummed a little sound of pleasure but strangled back the delighted groan that had actually threatened to emerge. No need to overdo it. 

It was just about then, with the warm concoction pressed to his lips, a blanket that smelled of Aziraphale tangled around his lanky legs, and the angel himself serenely paging through a book he had likely already read a dozen or more times, that Crowley realized quite suddenly that he was well and truly _ content _.

The heart-racing terror of it followed about 2.4 seconds later.

To his credit, the demon managed to school his reaction almost immediately, but his sudden burst of unexpected emotion must have been more intense than he initially realized because Aziraphale looked up sharply with a frown. 

"Is anything wrong?" the angel asked, quite innocently.

Crowley attempted to mask his initial discomfort with another long drink of his mocha, but Aziraphale's gaze persisted. "S' fine, angel. Just-" 

_ Just what? _

"-a feather gone out of place and pinched me funny."

_ Oh for fu- Was that seriously the best you could do? _

Aziraphale stared at him for a moment, his gaze flicking back to a spot behind the demon's back where his black wings would appear were he to materialize them on this plain. "Have you preened lately, my dear boy?" he asked, a hint of genuine concern underlying curiosity. "I know you prefer to take care of your wings yourself, but I could give you a hand if you wish."

Crowley took another (purposefully slow) drink of mocha to help hide the way his pupils dilated at the offer. He'd actually only preened a few weeks before, but was tempted to take Aziraphale up on the suggestion none-the-less. It was something they'd never done, and wing preening was one of the most spiritually soothing experiences two angels (not that he was one, anymore) could share.

However, the thought of letting Aziraphale care for his wings made his initial feeling of being _ content _flare back into his mind and set him to panicking again.

"No thanks," he said, waving a hand dismissively and cringing a little at his use of the T-word. "Was just a twinge. S' gone now." He rolled his shoulders a little theatrically as though that somehow proved something.

Aziraphale considered the demon for so long that Crowley had to remind his corporation that it was absolutely, undoubtedly _ not _permitted to sweat under any circumstances. His heart, however, had precisely zero fear of the ancient being wrapped around it and proceed to beat a little too hard and a little too fast whilst playfully attempting to escape him by way of his throat.

"If you're sure…" Aziraphale finally said, turning back to his book and allowing Crowley the opportunity to breathe again. "But just know that the offer stands, my dear, should you ever be so inclined to take advantage."

Only Aziraphale could make an intimate offer sound like a prospect laid out to a fellow businessman and yet still make Crowley's heart warm contentedl-

_ Fuck. _

He almost dropped his mug this time and knew, though he didn't look to confirm, that Aziraphale was staring at him again. Possibly glaring. Before the angel could speak a word, the demon deposited his half-full mug on the table, snatched up his dark glasses (which he cursed himself for not having done earlier), and stalked toward the door while muttering something about watering his plants.

He heard the mixture of concern and hurt in Aziraphale's tone as he called out, "Crowley, whatever is the matter?" and he almost turned back. Almost explained exactly what was wrong despite the fact that he himself hadn't worked it out yet. Almost rewound the conversation entirely to say, "Wing preening! Yes! Let's do that, it sounds ever so lovely!"

But he was, whether he understood why or not, in full-blown nervous breakdown mode at this point, so he instead lifted a hand, called back, "Be back later, angel!" without turning around, and practically ran out of the bookshop as fast as his feet would take him.

* * *

Aziraphale watched Crowley burst out of the shop and across the road to the Bentley with a tight, uncomfortable feeling in his chest.

_ What in the world was all that about? _

Crowley had seemed in such a lovely mood in those first few moments after waking, and then it had just seemed to vanish in a burst of- What _ had _it been? There had definitely been some kind of 'emotional explosion', for want of a better term. But it had been quite unreadable to the angel - a veritable cacophony of gibberish.

Aziraphale sighed, frustrated (not for the first time) that he couldn't _ read _ Crowley. Oh, certainly, they were very close friends and Aziraphale knew a great deal about the demon, could work out what he was thinking by noticing certain body movements and vocal inflections. But when it came down to really understanding how Crowley _ felt _about something, the angel was completely and utterly lost.

It was particularly infuriating because angels were meant to be able to feel emotion. _ Made _ for it, in fact. Of course the main focus was love, but other things came through as well, should the angel be paying enough attention. It was a useful ability that had helped him befriend and inspire humanity throughout the ages, but it wasn't limited just to mortals. For instance, when he had been masquerading as Crowley down in Hell during their trials, he had been well aware of the tumultuous waves of anger and disgust rolling off the demons toward him. He'd practically _ delighted _ in the firecracker-like sparks of fear that had ricocheted off them during his holy water bath. 

The point was that he knew darn well that - at least when he was focusing on it - he could pick up the emotions of demons just as well as from humans and fellow angels.

Except, it seemed, for _ his _demon.

_ His _demon (and he refused to think of Crowley any other way at this point) seemed to have an emotional compass that was permanently planted right at the center of a blessed electrical storm. 

Aziraphale sat in his chair, no longer comfortable in the slightest, the book on his lap forgotten, the tea on his side-table gone cold. He wondered if he should go after Crowley. There had been so many times in their past when he _ definitely _ should have gone after him but didn't, out of fear, out of a misplaced sense of duty and allegiance. He knew better now, wasn't afraid anymore, so yes, maybe he _ should _go after him. Find out what was wrong. Figure out how to fix it.

But then again, he also had such a history of misreading Crowley, of getting things very wrong, missing important cues, putting his foot in his mouth and failing to extract it for decades, even centuries at a time. Maybe there wasn't even anything wrong at all. Maybe Crowley just...felt like a bit of time to himself. They _ had _been spending an unprecedented amount of time together since the world hadn't ended and their respective sides had failed to utterly obliviate them. Since they'd become Our Side. 

Perhaps it was reasonable to think that the demon was simply beginning to tire of the angel's presence. 

Reason didn't make the prospect of it sting any less. 

Aziraphale reached up to remove his little reading glasses and rub his suddenly-aching head. He thought too much. He knew this. He knew because Crowley had told him often enough. It was, unfortunately, a habit he had had no semblance of success in tamping down.

He would wait, he decided stubbornly. Crowley had left very suddenly and with an unreadable maelstrom of emotion trailing behind him, but he'd also said very clearly that he would "be back later", so Aziraphale would wait. He would wait faithfully and patiently for his demon to deal with whatever the issue was and return to him in his own time.

And if he just so happened to spend his waiting time thinking obsessively of things he could do to make it right if it turned out that there _ was _something wrong, well...that was his own damn perogative.

* * *

By the time Crowley was slamming the door to his Mayfair flat he was well and truly furious with himself.

"What in _ Heaven _ was that?!" he growled aloud as he stomped through the halls, hair practically smoking. "Why do you _ do _these things to yourself?! What's wrong with a little blessed contentment anyway?!"

He burst into the plant room, where many a leaf was already trembling from the sound of his approach. Looking for something, _ anything _, to occupy his hands he snatched up his mister and began spraying at random, his mind far too busy to focus on what his body was doing.

"I'll tell you what's wrong with contentment," he snarled at a positively quaking dracaena. "What's wrong with contentment is that it leads to complacency, and complacency makes you stupid, dulls the senses, and when your senses are dull you don't realize that you've been missing things until it's too late."

He was soaking an already well-watered ivy now, but he was on a roll. Something was starting to bubble to the surface, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.

"Have I been missing things? Might have done. Been so _ bloody content _, after all."

No, wait, he was back where he'd begun.

"Missing things, missing things… What have I missed? What isn't right? What about where we are right now is _ not right _?"

It was the unintentional use of "we" that got him, hit him like a crowbar to the back (which, Aziraphale had assured him, did not tickle in the slightest). 

It was the "we". It was Aziraphale. It was waking up in Aziraphale's shop, wrapped tenderly in Aziraphale's scent. It was sweet treats concocted especially for him by Aziraphale's hand and knowing that it must have been Aziraphale's doing that the softest pillow in the known universe had somehow found its way under his head as he slept. 

It was, as it had always been, the fact that Crowley loved Aziraphale, utterly, implicity, ineffably. 

And that love absolutely terrified him down to the core of his being because it meant he had something extremely precious to lose.

Crowley had already experienced what it was like to lose that most precious thing when Aziraphale's shop had burned down, presumably with the angel inside it. He'd experienced the crushing, devastating misery of not being able to _ feel _ his angel and therefore knowing, without a hope of doubt in his head, that the only being he'd ever truly cared about with everything he had was _ gone forever _. 

He hadn't been. But Crowley never, _ ever _ wanted to feel that kind of pain again.

And that, this thought combined with the fact that he had thankfully, gloriously, miraculously had Aziraphale returned to him, brought him back to the original crux of the issue manifesting in his brain.

He'd gotten content. He didn't want to be _ content _.

They'd (in their own incompetent way) helped to save the world. They'd earned their freedom from Heaven and Hell. He had his angel alive and well, and they were free to do as they wished, whenever they wished, however they wished.

Which meant that Crowley didn't want to be _ content _. Not a little bit content, not extraordinarily content. He wanted to be…

He wanted to be…

"I want to be _ with _him," he barely whispered.

The plants around him, quite shocked and confused by this sudden shift in tone, tentatively leaned toward the demon to listen in. 

"I don't just want to be content to eat and drink, feed the ducks, wake up on his couch every now and then and watch him read." He put the mister down and buried his face in his hands, ran them through his hair, letting his glasses go clatting to the floor. "I want- I want-"

What? To wake up in Aziraphale's bed every morning instead of on the couch every so often? To cook meals together - even horrid messes of meals - instead of always going out? To leave the ducks to their own devices and fly off to travel the world they'd saved together?

All of that, yes, and more. But mostly…

"I want..._ fucking blessed Heaven and Hell and everything in between _ ...I think I want bloody _ committment _."

He felt the demonic soul inside him burning at the very concept. And, he supposed, even that thought wasn't _ quite _right, but it was as close as he was going to get. 

He wanted to _ know _, to know without the tiniest shadow of niggling doubt that it was him and his angel for the rest of time. He wanted to know that nothing and nobody would ever separate them and that they could do what they wanted - together - for the remainder of their immortal existences. 

And he wanted, of course, to know that Aziraphale wanted the same thing.

Amber eyes rose from where they'd been staring at the dropped glasses, rose up to find that all the plants in the room were leaning toward him, anticipating, wanting to hear what he was going to say next. 

"Oh don't be so bloody nosy," he snarled as he stalked off.

The plants were left with just a little bit of a softer opinion of their dictator-like owner.

* * *

_ Later _had come and gone, and Aziraphale had been staring, lips pursed, at the same paragraph of the same page of the same book for nearly thirty-six consecutive hours.

_ If only I knew what he was thinking! _his mind screamed for the three-thousand, two-hundred, and eighty-fourth time.

He was trying so very hard. Trying not to worry, trying not to panic, trying not to second-guess himself and compulsively reassess every little thing he may have done wrong at some point. 

And he was failing miserably. Thirty-six hours he'd managed to glue himself to his chair, refusing to break his commitment to _ wait _, but his resolve was growing weaker by the passing moment. 

What if, he thought irresistibly, _ Crowley _ was waiting for _ him _? What if the demon's discontent was growing each second that Aziraphale failed to come to him and approach the issue (whatever on Earth the issue was)?

He'd just stood up, finally dissolving the metaphorical glue that held him to his chair, when the shop's doorbell jingled despite the shop being very definitively _ closed _.

"Crowley?" He couldn't stop the hopeful tone that escaped him as he called out, nor the way relief washed over his shoulders when the demon came sauntering around the corner to the back room.

"Alright angel?" Crowley asked in a nonchalant kind of way. His glasses were pressed as tight to his face as they could be and his fingers were stuffed into his too-tight-and-tiny pockets.

_ No you silly fool! _ Aziraphale thought. _ I've been driving myself absolutely batty wondering why you stormed off, whether I could have done anything to stop you, and whether you were ever actually going to come back! _

"Oh yes, of course!" was what he said aloud. "Tickity-boo!"

Normally Crowley got a cringe of a look on his face and relentlessly tormented Aziraphale whenever he used such antiquated turns of phrase, but today he barely seemed to register that the angel had spoken at all. He was nodding absently, fidgeting more so even than usual, and looking (in so far as Aziraphale could tell through those damnable glasses) at a random spot on the wall somewhere behind the angel's head. 

"Hmm," the demon mumbled, then cleared his throat and extracted one hand to wave it around in a meaningless, noncommittal kind of gesture. "So, heard there's to be a meteor shower tonight, thought y' might want to go watch. Maybe have a late-night picnic."

Aziraphale blinked. It definitely wasn't where he'd thought the conversation (or, so far, lack thereof) was going to go, but it was also vastly preferable to some of the prospects that _ had _been crossing his mind.

"A lovely idea, dear, really," he said with a genuine smile, "but I rather expect London's light pollution might make the viewing of said meteors somewhat difficult."

Crowley expertly shoved his fingers back into that miniscule pocket and shrugged. "Know a place," he said. "Out around South Downs. Great view. Secluded." He seemed to hesitate for a moment before adding, "Could even stretch our wings while we're out there if we wanted."

Was it just Aziraphale, or had he caught a slight hint of pink playing across Crowley's cheeks for a moment there?

Pushing that thought aside for the moment, Aziraphale focused on the familiar tumult that was Crowley's emotional signature. It was different from the previous day, still wholly uninterperative, but he seemed less...negative, so that was good.

The angel allowed himself to beam at the demon. "Well that just sounds like a rather enjoyable evening," he agreed with a smart nod. "Should I pack some treats and perhaps something to drink for the outing?"

That hand was out again, fingers waving. "No need," Crowley assured him. "Everything's in the Bentley."

This caused Aziraphale's eyebrows to raise. Crowley could be exceptionally thoughtful at times, but he'd never prepared food and drink for them before, unless you counted selecting the appetizers and a nice champagne at the Ritz while the angel scoured through the entrees. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed, trying and failing to mask the note of surprise in his voice. "How very sweet of you!" He almost backtracked immediately, cringing internally as he remembered Crowley's persistent disdain of being described in a positive light. Instead, he was struck silent when (he was _ certain _this time) he noticed the flash of a flush that tinted the demon's cheeks for just a moment.

"Yeah, well," Crowley muttered. He'd turned his entire body in order to (Aziraphale assumed) hide the treacherous coloring of his face, and was making a strange, jerky gesture with one shoulder. "Sh' we get on then?" he suggested.

Aziraphale floundered for just a moment, drowning in a sea of his own inability to deduce the direction Crowley's thoughts were taking, before plastering a perfectly legitimate grin on his face. 

"Jolly good. I'm ever so curious to see what you've prepared!"

* * *

As they stepped out of the Bentley on a fairly deserted bit of road far away from anything even _ pretending _to be civilization, Crowley muttered a quiet apology to his beloved vehicle. He'd been so nerve-wracked the entire drive that he felt certain he'd gripped the steering wheel tight enough to warp it and everything connected to it. But he'd worry about that later. If he added one more worry to his list right now he might physically combust. 

Aziraphale was considering their location rather warily, an eyebrow raised, so the demon gestured to a small path that set off through the trees on the other side of the road. "We walk from here," he explained as he extracted an oversized basket from the back of the Bentley. "Don't worry. S' not too far."

They walked in relative silence, Crowley striding (in appearance only) confidently, while Aziraphale occasionally paused to coo at a hutch of newborn bunnies or praise a particularly stately-looking fawn. Crowley's nerves refused to abate, but he did find himself relaxing a tad as he listened to his angel communing adorably with the local wildlife.

_ Heaven never understood what they had with you, angel. And now they never will. _

The thought made him both sad for all the unkind pandering Aziraphale had gone through with the other angels, and also overjoyed knowing that the only angel that mattered in this world was now free from all of that. Free to make his own choices. Hopefully...hopefully one choice in particular.

"Here we go," Crowley announced, and was pleased by the little gasp of wonder that floated up from behind to meet him.

They'd broken through the treeline to a wide expanse of cliff overlooking the ocean. The sun was just beginning to set, the rays of pinkish gold illuminating a field of wildflowers in whites and purples and yellows. Long, verdant grass swayed in the soft breeze, dancing with the flowers and creating the gentlest rustle to swirl in the air with the soft pulse of waves cresting on the shore far below.

"Oh Crowley, dear!" Aziraphale exclaimed, his smile a thousand times brighter than the sun that kissed the horizon. "It's like something out of a fairy tale!"

He looked so genuinely happy, so wistfully pleased, that Crowley couldn't find it in himself to say anything suitably offhand or dismissive. "Thought you might like it," he said, opting for straightforward honesty for a change. 

"I love it," Aziraphale gushed. He was beaming so vibrantly that he might have blinded a meer mortal. "Oh, but we simply must ensure not to harm any of these beautiful flowers while we're here."

"No problem," Crowley assured him. With a snap of his fingers the flowers jumped from their original places, nesting a little closer together in order to leave a safe path open for their celestial visitors. Crowley steadfastly kept his gaze off the grateful look he just _ knew _ the angel was sending his way, lest he melt on the spot and ruin the rest of his intentions for the night.

They found a perfect spot, just a couple of feet from the cliff's edge, and as the sun dipped further beyond the expanse of water, Crowley spread a large blanket (that just _ happened _to be exactly the color of Aziraphale's eyes) before meticulously setting out all the goodies he'd brought along. He'd gone, perhaps, a little overboard, but it was well worth it for the little noises of delight that came from the angel at the sight of all his favorite pastries, cakes, truffles, and other various sweets. 

Last came two wine glasses and a bottle of something that sparkled with just the slightest hint of a blush-pink hue. The bottle had no label, and Aziraphale examined it with curiosity.

Crowley knew the question was coming and decided to cut it off at the pass, even thought the admission made his insides squirm. "It's a, uh...a special vintage...that I commissioned back in, oh...the third or fourth century."

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at that. "You commissioned your own vintage of wine?" he repeated. "And have been sitting on it for this long? Whatever for?"

Crowley had to visibly struggle against the urge to twitch. "I, uh-" He waved his hand around in a little circle, reaching for an explanation that didn't sound ridiculously lame, and came up wanting. "It was around that time that you started to realize just how fond you were of wine, and I thought I'd try to concoct something designed specifically to your pallet." He was _ well _aware that there was a bit of hot red crawling up his neck, but try as he might he couldn't bully his corporation into knocking it off this time.

About a thousand things seemed to be fighting for space on Aziraphale's face at once, but the clearest and most obvious of those was, Crowley assured himself, a bewildered sense of graciousness. The angel opened and closed his mouth several times before finally insisting, "Well we simply _ must _try it at once!"

Crowley smiled a shaky smile, poured two generous portions into the waiting glasses, and handed one over to the angel, who swirled it playfully and leaned in for a sniff. His eyes popped fully open and a moment later he had the glass tilting to his lips. Crowley felt a little more of his nervousness melt away as a moan of pleasure accompanied Aziraphale's ecstatic smile. 

"Crowley!" he cried. "This is absolutely _ divine! _ I don't think I've ever tasted _ anything _so-" He just sighed, lost in the flavors, which had Crowley grinning ear-to-ear. "Do I detect hints of vanilla and-" The angel thought for a moment. "-it's a bit like strawberry, but not quite?"

Crowley took a slow sip from his own glass, remembering back to the day he'd taste-tested his creation and declared it ready to be aged. "Your discerning tongue is as close as it could possibly get to the truth," he admitted, "give I _ may _have used a little demonic miracle to create an entirely unique breed of grapes for this and this alone." He may have felt the red flush expand further, but he was distracted from it by a spark of pride at the awed look on Aziraphale's face.

"_ Wily _ serpent!" he teased with a laugh. "Seems a shame though," he thought aloud after savoring another sip. "Such effort for something so wonderful, only for it to be consumed and lost forever."

It was so poetic that Crowley almost (_ almost _) hated to reveal the second part of the story. "Yeah, well, you won't have to worry about that for a while since I had a few...thousand bottles kipped away."

Aziraphale choked on the further drink he'd been taking. "A few _ thousand?! _"

Crowley snickered and lifted a plate to the sputtering angel. "It pairs wonderfully with sweets, so I knew I'd need a lot," he said with a wink. "Go ahead, angel. Have an eclair."

Aziraphale happily traded incredulity for indecent sounds of pure happiness as he sampled the treats that had been laid before him, along with plenty more of Crowley's wonderful wine. Crowley picked at a few things while enjoying plenty of wine as well, and allowed himself the lovely sight of watching his angel be so happy.

It was dark by the time Aziraphale had had his fill of treats (though not, of course, his fill of wine), but the moon was bright and full and the stars that twinkled into existence completed the absolutely perfect atmosphere.

Well, _ almost _perfect. That was still yet to come.

"Showtime, angel," Crowley whispered. He gestured with his wine glass to the velvety sky as the first string of light streamed across the heavens.

The first was followed by a second, a third, and then suddenly the sky was raining with them: soft yet burning, bright bursts that blazed across the edge of the world, natural fireworks screaming downward, leaving their mark on the Earth for only a brief moment in time. It was beautiful and sad, exciting and serene, and as Aziraphale watched with eyes wide and full of reverence, Crowley watched Aziraphale with the same kind of gaze. 

And he knew, despite any lingering nerves that stubbornly clung to him for dear life, that what he was about to do was _ right. _

* * *

Deep in the shadows of a nearby cliffside, as pinpricks of light danced across the night sky, a tall figure stood rigid, tight fists clasped behind his back.

He'd been there for some time now, glaring at the pair of figures on the adjacent cliff, and he expected he would stay even longer, possibly even longer than the two figures themselves, until he'd glared sufficiently enough to get his fill. 

"Izzzn't lurking more my lotzzz thing?"

The Archangel Gabriel didn't so much as twitch to betray his distaste, but he felt a nerve somewhere in the back of his brain clench as a smaller, darker figure appeared beside him.

"I'm not _ lurking, _ " he grumbled in a very unangelic way. "I'm _ glaring _." 

Beelzebub, diminutive Prince of Hell, looked up with an eyebrow raised. "Glaring izzz more our thing too," they pointed out. 

Gabriel's jaw twitched. 

The two watched the scene before them in silence for a long time. The magesty of the meteor storm was lost to them, a mere blip of movement in the background of the infuriating play unfolding on a hideous blue blanket on a numbingly rage-inducing evening.

Beelzebub eventually broke the spell with a nasty sneer. "Better reign that in angel. I can feel the hatred radiating off you. You'll be joining my zzzide before you know it."

Gabriel's sneer rivaled the Prince's. He ignored the implication that he was in any danger of falling. "It's inexplicable," he growled, purple eyes flashing. "They both betray their own kind, go against the Great Plan, _ cavort _with one another… And yet somehow they live, after we subjected them to holy water and hellfire." The Archangel's cool demeanor cracked enough for him to thrust a shaking fist into a nearby tree, neatly splitting the trunk in two equal vertical halves. "They made fools of us all."

A buzzing sound that could have been either a hum of amusement or an annoyed assent vibrated out of Beelzebub's throat. "Morezzzo than you even realizzzze."

Gabriel's gaze finally tore away from the sickening scene he'd been focused on all night to squint down at the Demon Prince. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

Beelzebub hesitated for entirely too long, clearly enjoying making the Archangel twitch as his patience waned. Once it seemed that Gabriel had just reached the end of his tether and was about to physically erupt, the Prince finally spoke again. "Ever zzzince the trialzzz, we've been trying to work out how Crowley did it. If we could make demonzzz imperviouzzz to holy water, it would guarantee uzzz the war." They cocked an amused eyebrow up at Gabriel, who twitched but didn't comment. "We watched him carefully, only when zzzertain he wouldn't notizzze. And we zzzaw zzzomething quite interezzzting…"

This time Gabriel only allowed for a momentary pause before he outright snapped, "Out with it already!"

Beelzebub's generally bored-and-annoyed expression became one of cruel triumph. "He wandered into a memorial garden that had been blezzzed by a preizzzt. And promptly ran off with hizzz feet zzzmoking."

Gabriel frowned. He'd never been a great scholar even among his fellow angels, but with this new information wheels were turning. "But why would blessed ground harm him if holy water doesn't?" His frown deepened. "Unless-?" 

"Unlezzz it doezzz," Beelzebub finished for him. "Unlezzz the immunity was not some great and terrible power he pozzzezzzezzz, but rather a temporary trick hatched between him and your Prinzzzipality."

The wheels were really rolling now. Things were slotting into place. And a positively outraged look was spreading across Gabriel's face. "A _ trick, _" he growled through perfectly-white, clenched teeth. Then his purple eyes lit up in the most devilish of ways. "But if it was temporary, that means we could capture them again and execute them properly this time!"

The Archangel's gaze shot back to the pair on their blanket in the grass, sat far too close to one another for his liking. Soon the frown returned to his face and he hazarded a glance back at the demon beside him. "If you've known this, why haven't you acted yourself?"

At this Beelzebub gave their angelic counterpart a sly, slimy smirk. "After all they've put uzzz through, I began to think that, maybe, obliteration izzz too merzzziful…"

Gabriel blinked stupidly for several long seconds before a slow smile, a little too much like that of the Prince of Hell, stole across his face.

"What did you have in mind?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha ha ha ha...I definitely didn't expect the first real chapter of this story to be nearly 6000 words, but here we are. Yikes! I guess this story is going to end up being longer than I originally intended. I hope you guys enjoy it!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	3. A Deeper Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale have always been deeply connected, but Aziraphale decides that they should be more-so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Here we go! Finally got another chapter up. I've been writing these by hand and transcribing later on, and it turning out to be quite a bit longer than I had originally intended, so please forgive how long it takes me to get individual chapters up!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _"A plot to bring cruel death to worlds_ **

** _Within the minds of lovers' dreams"_ **

* * *

****

There was really no other way to say it: Aziraphale was utterly enchanted by the evening Crowley had put together for them. The setting was beautiful, the view was spectacular, the food and drink both delicious and wonderfully thoughtful. And the company, of course, was the company he liked most, the only company he truly ever needed to be happy. It was  _ perfect _ .

Or, rather, it was  _ about  _ to be.

"Aziraphale…" 

Crowley's voice was soft as the last few meteors fell from the sky, but the sound of his name, rather than the usual "angel", from the demon's mouth made him startle a little. He turned to meet his best friend's gaze and felt his stomach flutter a bit at what he saw there. 

Crowley had removed his glasses, and his beautiful amber eyes were filled with emotions: hope, wonder, determination...and perhaps just a hit of fear. He was fidgeting, picking at a loose thread in the blanket, but beside that small movement he was uncharacteristically still. His gaze was arresting, deep, and soulful, and Aziraphale found it would have been quite impossible for him to look away, even had he wanted to.

"What is it, dear?" the angel whispered. He hadn't meant to whisper, but it was as though his voice knew something that his brain did not and had automatically adjusted its volume appropriately. 

"I wanted to talk to you about something," the demon began. His gaze flicked down to the thread he was worrying. "But...words...not really my thing, are they?" He smiled a little down at the thread, which was finding itself wound around his long fingers. "You've always been the one 's good with words. More about actions, me."

He paused, seemingly giving Aziraphale the opportunity to interject, but the angel felt that it wasn't yet the time. Instead he watched, patient, as Crowley's eyes traced the path the thread was weaving in and around his fidgeting digits. Eventually the demon spoke again.

"I've never been a particularly great demon. Most of the time I've spent on Earth has been claiming responsibility for all the horrible things humans have come up with all on their own. But the one thing I  _ will  _ stake a claim to, willingly, is that I'm the only damned creature in all of Hell with a bloody imagination. And I've used it well. In fact, for the past six-thousand-and-sixteen-years, to the day, I've been imagining very hard that my best friend sees nothing but a jumbled mess whenever he tries to peek at what I'm feeling."

Several thoughts went through Aziraphale's head then. The first was a startled realization that, yes indeed, it was in fact the six-thousand-and-sixteenth anniversary of the day they'd met on the Garden wall. The second was something akin to ' _ I bloody knew there had to be some logical explanation!' _ The third blustered out of him in a sputtering, embarrassed cluster of desperate defenses.

"Pardon? I never-! Such a thing to- Total breach of privacy that- To think that I-!"

Crowley finally looked back up, a wry smile on his face and a sparkle in his eye. "I respectfully retract what I said about you being the one 's good with words."

Aziraphale sputtered a tad more before finally, with a mock pout, accepting defeat. "Oh fine," he grumbled. "I may have peeked a time or two when you were being particularly...vexing. But as you've just finished explaining, all I ever saw was a 'jumbled mess', so I suppose you accomplished your goal, anyway." Here the pout softened into kindness and sincere curiosity. "But I don't understand, my dear, why you felt the need to expend energy on such a thing for all these years."

Crowley gave a little shrug, and his smile became something soft and a little sad. "Fear? Frustration? Self-preservation? Self-loathing? Because I'm a bloody idiot?"

Aziraphale bristled. "Anthony J. Crowley, you are not-"

"It doesn't matter, angel," Crowley interrupted gently. "It doesn't matter  _ why  _ I did it. What matters is that I want to  _ stop  _ doing it. Right here, right now. I want to turn the world on its head and imagine that you can, in fact, see everything exactly as it is." And with that he detangled his fingers from the thread (which had become much longer than it was when it had started) and lifted his hand, palm up, offering it.

Aziraphale stared for a moment, as if the outstretched limb was a bomb. He had half a heartbeat, during that moment, to wonder if he was too scared, too scared to finally,  _ finally  _ see and understand.

By the time that heartbeat had completed, his hand was wrapped in Crowley's, squeezing tight.

Crowley's eyes seemed to flash bright for a moment, so quick it was gone before Aziraphale could register it happening, and then- 

"Oh!"

Crowley was like a bouquet of emotions, all blooming bright and clear and colorful in Aziraphale's mind and soul. He saw delicate springs of fear like baby's breath, tucked in among hopeful yellow daisies and pale blue bells of past sorrows. Tiny buttercups hid here and there in colorful flashes of inadequacy. Proud roses warred with humble petunias, and angry sprays of butterfly weed were being smothered by kind, caring lotus blossoms.

And there, at the center, the nucleus around which the rest of the bouquet revolved, were bright, beautiful, fragrant, thriving stargazer lilies, bursting outward like floral fireworks.

Devotion. Adoration.  _ Love _ .

Aziraphale had known for a long time that Crowley cared deeply for him (so unlikely, him being a demon), but he never could have guessed, had never had the slightest inkling as to the true extent of his feelings. It wasn't like a bouquet at all, he realized with breathless awe. It was an entire garden. One that was great expanses larger and more lush and more utterly  _ breathtaking  _ than even  _ the  _ Garden.

"Oh Crowley," Aziraphale breathed, his voice reverent with the sheer beauty of it all. "My dear, I must say...words truly escape me…"

He'd thought it was said in a positive way, a way that said he'd been absolutely blown away with childlike wonder, but as the words left his lips he looked into Crowley's watching eyes and saw the flickers of doubt, uncertainty, and vulnerability. 

"Oh my darling boy," the angel quickly added, "believe me, your fears are  _ quite  _ unfounded." With his free hand he reached up to lightly brush his palm across Crowley's cheek. Into that touch he sent every flutter of his heart, every sneaky sideways glance, every hope and fear and warm feeling experienced in the demon's presence. He sent every piece of himself that cried out for his companion, his best friend, his soulmate, the only one in all of existence who truly,  _ truly  _ mattered.

Crowley gave a little gasp, as light and delicate as the breath of wind generated by a hummingbird's beating wings. His eyes fluttered closed and suddenly he was leaning into the hand at his cheek, silently begging it to never leave. His lips just barely twitched into the most tender of smiles. 

"Oh thank... _ somebody _ ," he sighed. "I thought, and I hoped I wasn't wrong, but-" His voice hitched a bit, struck by an almost too-powerful wave of emotion. His eyes fluttered open, the snake-like orbs full and bright, and he squeezed his angel's hand as if intending their fingers to be fused together for all time.

"Angel," he said slowly, choosing his words very carefully. "In all of creation, you are the only one I've ever wanted or needed. I want to see the sun rise and set with you for as long as the sun itself continues to burn. I want to show you everything and see everything you have to show. I want to travel the universe with you, and sit still with you, eat and drink and lay in silence with you. I want to live every moment with you like it's the first and might be the last. I have absolutely no interest in eternity unless you're right there by my side for every moment of it."

Sometime, between heartbeats that pulsed so hard he couldn't breath through them, Aziraphale's eyes had filled with tears and begun to spill over, but his smile was as radiant as it had ever been. With his thumb he stole away the single tear that had dared roll down Crowley's beautiful face. "Words aren't your thing, hmm?" he said with a small sniffle. "Well, actions aren't mine, but as long as we're shaking things up so thoroughly…"

Without even a hint of hesitation he pulled the demon's face closer and pressed their lips together; soft, warm, chaste.

_ Perfect. _

Crowley let out another of those precious little gasps as Aziraphale leaned back again. His face was calm and blissful, if a little surprised. "Can't say I was expecting that," he admitted. "Such a...human thing, kissing." Not that he appeared to have been disappointed in the slightest.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale said with a cheeky grin, "the dears do occasionally get something  _ quite  _ right."

Crowley laughed. It was such a bubbling, joyous, truly  _ happy  _ laugh that it made fireworks (or maybe they were stargazers?) bloom in the angel's chest. 

"If we're going to follow their lead, maybe I should have brought rings and a holy man," the demon teased.

Aziraphale chuckled. "Perhaps, someday, when we're feeling in a particularly festive mood," he suggested, "we could do the partying bit with our human friends."

Crowley grinned like a fool at that. "Love a good party, me."

And then, suddenly, Aziraphale was looking contemplative. He finally - much to the demon's disappointment - removed his hand from Crowley's face, only to use it to - much to the demon's delight - take up his free hand. 

"Humans," he said, focusing on the way their hands seemed to fit perfectly together, "exchange rings and vows as a symbolic gesture to one another. A promise, to be bound to the other, life, body, and soul. The rings and the words are merely a placeholder, in a way, meant to express the idea of giving a piece of one's self to the other. It's a lovely ceremony, but-" Here he met Crowley's curious eyes, his own sparkling with something like mischief. "-I think we can do them one better in this particular regard."

Crowley watched, confusion growing, as Aziraphale manifested his beautiful, pearl-white wings. They outshone the moon and every star in the sky and made the demon's heart swell at the sight of them. 

The angel stretched his wings wide for a moment, relishing the way his whole body seemed to feel lighter and more  _ whole _ , and then he began fastidiously searching through the primary feathers of his left wing.

Crowley cried out in alarm when the angel made a decision, winced, and plucked a large white feather clean from himself with a sharp hiss of pain. "What in the world d'you do that for?" the demon exclaimed.

Aziraphale only smiled. "Wings, please," he requested quite calmly.

Though he was more than a little bewildered, Crowley didn't hesitate for even a moment. Per his angel's request he manifested silky ebony wings, deeper and darker than the outermost depths of the midnight sky. 

Aziraphale ran his fingers through the feathers of the right wing, smoothing and stroking and loving the way his touch made Crowley shiver. He lingered this way perhaps a bit longer than necessary before choosing a primary and looking to Crowley for permission. The demon nodded and tensed, and Aziraphale pulled as quickly and cleanly as he could, simultaneously using a little miracle to soften the pinch. 

He handed Crowley his own black feather, and then reached up to the empty spot it had come from. There, among a sea of black, he lay his white feather, and with a gentle kiss and a whispered miracle, he bid the small piece of himself become Crowley's, for now and for always. When he took his lips and fingers away the feather remained, as much a part of the demon's wings as any other that had ever graced them.

Crowley's eyes were wide with wonder as his angel's gaze returned to his own. "I can feel it," he all but whispered. "I can feel... _ you. _ " His tone was reverent, astounded, worshipful. 

Aziraphale's eyes crinkled as he smiled and bent his own wing down to his demon's hands. "Do me the honor?"

Crowley's fingers brushed along the heavenly white of the angel's pristine wings, and at this he  _ did  _ hesitate. He frowned at the single black feather in his hand and turned a worried gaze to Aziraphale. "You sure?" he asked. His brows knitted together and he absently gnawed at his lower lip. "Your wings are so beautiful, angel. I- I don't want to...sully them."

He barely had the words out before Aziraphale's hands were cupping his face. "First, Anthony J. Crowley," he said, firm but loving, "your wings are glorious. They're plush black satin, ebony gems, and the vast majesty of open space, and I will tell you so every day for the remainder of eternity if that's what it takes to convince you to believe me."

Crowley was visibly trembling in his attempt to fight back the tears that were now threatening to fall, so Aziraphale made the rest of his point just a little bit softer.

"And if you're implying that I might not really want this connection to you, you are sorely, sorely mistaken, my dear. Now-" He fluttered the wing that Crowley was still clutching at. "If you'd kindly?"

Crowley thrust his arm up against his face for a moment to wipe away the tears that had most certainly  _ not  _ begun to fall. Then, with the giddy grin of a man who'd just been granted his heart's every desire, he gingerly fit his feather into the empty space on Aziraphale's wing, before performing his own demonic miracle to bind it to its new owner. 

Aziraphale felt like he was standing at the center of Crowley's vast garden, a garden he could never hope to explore every blossom of.

Not that that was ever going to stop him from trying.

Crowley lovingly stroked the spot where the small piece of himself had joined the bring, beautiful whole that was his angel, and he couldn't stop the rather undemonic giggle that erupted from him. "With this feather I be wed," he snickered with a wide grin.

Then the two of them were giggling, then laughing outright - big, ridiculous belly laughs that had their ribs aching and brought them toppling down onto the bright blue blanket with red cheeks and burning lungs. 

By the time they'd calmed down they were flat on their backs, wings and fingers entangled, staring up at the stars. Aziraphale felt like he was dreaming, finally about to feel what his demon felt, and secure in the knowledge that what said demon felt was everything the angel himself had ever hoped he felt, and more.

"You were right," came Crowley's soft, wonderfully bewildered voice.

Aziraphale turned his head away from the beauty of the stars about them to gaze at a completely different (and vastly superior) beauty. His hypnotizing demon had his free hand draped over his body, reaching up to brush his fingers over their overlapped wings. The two mismatched feathers stood out on their respective beds of white and black.

"This-" Crowley clarified, his smile practically glowing, "-this is so much better than some silly rings."

Aziraphale hummed, eyes alight. "I rather thought so myself," he agreed. Then, as an afterthought, "Though I do think I'd also enjoy a lovely onyx ring in the shape of a snake." He shot a cheeky wink Crowley's way. "You know, for when we have the party with our humans."

He'd expected Crowley to laugh at that, but instead the angel felt a warm, fresh burst of love flow from the demon, whose eyes had a look of vibrant euphoria.

"Your wish is my command, angel. From now until the end of time."  
  


* * *

For approximately one month, Crowley was truly, undeniably  _ happy _ .

And it was bloody amazing.

He woke in Aziraphale's bed, surrounded by Aziraphale's scent, and wrapped in an absolute excess of Aziraphale's love crashing over him in waves, especially on mornings when the angel had actually curled up in that same bed to read by his side.

They still did the same things they'd always done together, but now they'd begun exploring new things as well. Aziraphale, in particular, came up with many things he wanted to try together, which shocked and delighted the demon in a multitude of ways.

Crowley, who loved a good story but had never been much of a reader, somewhat-shyly asked Aziraphale to read some of his favorites to him while they snuggled on the couch in the shop. Aziraphale, whose last movie-going experience had been from before humans had worked out how to incorporate the sound, asked Crowley to introduce him to some of the better films that had been based on his precious books. 

Crowley taught Aziraphale some of the finer intricacies of gardening, and Aziraphale taught Crowley (begrudgingly) about treating plants with kindness instead of fear.

The first time Crowley suggested they try cooking like humans together it had been an unmitigated disaster that left the two of them in gales of laughter on the floor of the demon's once-pristine kitchen, every inch of them and the room covered in pasta sauce. But despite their overwhelming failure, the experience had sparked a desire in the angel, and they were now trying a new recipe every other night. Some of them even turned out edible.

But the biggest and most exciting surprise (in Crowley's opinion, anyway) was when he'd woken one morning to find Aziraphale's bed ( _ their _ bed!) littered with travel catalogues. This was one topic Crowley had been holding close to his chest because he wasn't certain how his angel would take to the idea of leaving his bookshop for extended periods of time. But, as it turned out, Aziraphale was quite keen on the idea of travelling back through time, so to speak, to visit all the places they'd gone throughout their six millennia. 

"Call it an exceptionally overzealous honeymoon," Aziraphale had chuckled, and Crowley had wrapped him in a hug so tight his corporation had momentarily stopped breathing.

When Crowley warily asked Aziraphale what he would do with the shop if they took off on such an extended trip, the angel had casually mentioned something about putting his books in storage and moving them to "the cottage" whenever they returned. It had taken a significant flurry of demonic wiles (or perhaps they were just  _ Crowley  _ wiles) to get Aziraphale to elaborate. When Crowley found out that his angel owned a little cottage with a garden in South Downs and was hoping that, perhaps, Crowley would be interested in moving there with him, the demon had certainly  _ not  _ whimpered and certainly  _ not  _ had to hide his face in a pillow while Aziraphale lovingly rubbed his back and gently teased him for being such a softie. 

Crowley got Aziraphale that onyx ring: a snake that coiled twice around the angel's finger and had a tiny red ruby inlaid for the eye. Aziraphale praised it's beauty and swore he'd never take it off, before removing his own angel-wing signet band and sliding it reverently onto Crowley's finger, much to the demon's (teary-eyed) delight.

It was all Crowley had ever dreamed of down in the deepest reaches of his being, buried as low down as possible where the longing couldn't pull him apart. And through it all there was the constant warm reminder, the unfaltering feeling of love that spread through his entire body from that single snow-white feather nestled into his wing, tucked away in the ethereal realm.

Aziraphale had, in a way, given Heaven back to Crowley. Only, this was arguably much more wonderful than Heaven had ever been.

He should have known it would only be a matter of time before it all went to Hell.  
  


* * *

They were celebrating Halloween.

Despite the laundry list of reasons an angel should, honestly, abhor the "spooky" holiday, Aziraphale found it to be quite charming. He loved seeing all the wonderful costumes humans came up with, and he rather enjoyed wandering the streets of London, miracling some extra treats into the sacks of children who were having the time of their lives. 

"You're creating a whole new generation of hedonists, angel," Crowley teased as they walked together past shrieking monsters and movie characters and all manner of odd creatures. "Plus, oh,  _ the cavities! _ And childhood obesity! That's always a good one."

"Oh hush," Aziraphale admonished with a playful slap. He miracled a few extra-special treats into the pale of a little girl who had dropped the lollipop she was eating, then waved his hand and presented her with a brand new one and a smile. As she ran off with a grin to rejoin her friends the angel added, "It's a day just for the children, and I think that's just lovely."

"Mmhmm," mumbled Crowley with a smirk. "And those mini cheesecakes shaped like pumpkins that you picked up from the shop up the street, are those for the children too?"

"Absolutely not!" Aziraphale replied, pretending to be affronted. "Those are mine, and anyone who dares touch them will find themselves the recipient of a rather thorough smiting."

Crowley warped his face into the most pathetically adorable pout he could muster.

"Oh, except you darling," Aziraphale relented with a pat of his (now grinning) demon's cheek.

They continued their trek into the evening. Crowley had never really thought all that much about the possibilities of Halloween (seemed a shame to risk ruining it on the kids), but found that he rather enjoyed leaving his glasses off and having kids and adults alike comment on his 'incredibly realistic demon contact lenses'. At one point Aziraphale lamented that perhaps he should have worn a 'costume' as well, to which Crowley pointed out that his clothes were old enough to technically qualify as one themselves.

It was during the ensuing (goodhearted) fight that both celestial beings stopped at the same time, lips snapped shut and bodies tensed, senses piqued in the worst kind of way.

"Did you feel-?"

"Probably not what you felt, but that means we've got twice the problem."

Crowley's hair felt like it was standing on end. His every instinct hissed at him to grab his angel and run, but he knew that showing fear would ultimately do more harm than good. 

There was a strong demonic presence somewhere nearby, not even  _ attempting  _ to mask itself. In fact, if anything, it was trying its best to be noticed. And judging by Aziraphale's matching expression, there was an angelic presence nearby as well.

It could have been a coincidence that a powerful demon and a powerful angel had both appeared in London at the exact same time, both unmasked and very close to where Aziraphale and Crowley were currently taking a stroll. It  _ could  _ have been. But Crowley would have put better odds on Lucifer winning back-to-back Father of the Year awards. 

"What do  _ they  _ want?" Aziraphale grumbled with a frown.

"Let's not find out," Crowley growled. He snatched up his angel's hand and squeezed it tight. "Which direction is yours coming from?"

Aziraphale gestured in the exact opposite of where Crowley's senses were pinging, so the demon pulled them in a perpendicular path while doing his damnedest to mask both of them from celestial view.

They wove through streets at a too-quick-to-be-casual pace, trying their best to look unperturbed to the humans milling in every direction (and failing phenomenally). As they moved, so too did the two presences, and it didn't take long to realize that they were slowly zoning in on their prey. Crowley cursed the busy streets as he fought to remember where he'd left the Bentley. Aziraphale sent out a wave of small miracles in an attempt to camouflage their path, whilst also providing his own form of angelic masking, but the two presences kept coming. 

"There's something seriously wrong here, Crowley," the angel said through clenched teeth. "Why even appear far enough away to give us a head start? If they've gotten bold enough to approach us again, why not just pop up right in front of us?"

Crowley's fangs materialized as he hissed, recognizing Aziraphale's logic. He steered them off the road and down an alley and proceeded to move even faster. "I see your point, but what else can we do but try to ge- Ng!"

Crowley's hand yanked quite suddenly out of Aziraphale's, and the combination of the resulting stumble and forward momentum sent the angel crashing into the brick wall they'd been about to turn around. 

Crowley had fallen flat on his ass, having run face-first into some kind of invisible barrier. "What the f-" His chest clenched and his eyes went wide with recognition of a rune that had become visible beneath a discarded newspaper. A sweep of one long leg scattered several other pieces of rubbish and revealed more runes, all glowing softly.

His heart leapt into his throat as his blown-wide eyes rose to his angel, who had just turned to return to him in clear confusion. "Aziraphale!" he cried, desperate. "Run!"

Realistically, Aziraphale wouldn't have left Crowley even if he had understood quickly enough. But as it stood, just as the realization of the situation was sinking in, he found himself flanked on either side. Silver manacles snapped around his wrists, and the moment they closed dark sigils burned hot on their surface. 

Crowley had been caught in a demon's trap. 

Aziraphale had been bound in celestial shackles.

And standing between them, looking far too pleased with themselves and more than a little insane, were the Archangel Gabriel and the Demon Prince Beelzebub.

Gabriel was the first to speak, because of-fucking-course he was. 

"Now, correct me if I'm wrong here," he offered with a shit-eating grin, "but I would have guessed that a demon who is somehow  _ miraculously  _ immune to holy water would have a  _ bit  _ more of a resistance against a rather simple and not-even-all-that-powerful demon trap. Hmm...curious. What do you think?" He tilted his head ever-so-slightly toward Beelzebub, who snarled.

"Yezzz...I agree."

"And," Gabriel continued, spinning to face Aziraphale, "surely an angel of the Lord who also possesses an uncanny immunity to  _ hellfire _ would be capable of shattering a rather basic angel-binding, wouldn't you think?"

"It zzztandzzz to reazzzon," Beelzebub concurred. 

Crowley scrambled to his feet and slammed his hands against the barrier that held him, uncaring of the way the power of it buzzed and burned against his skin. "Let the angel go," he found himself begging. "Please, just take me, and you can do whatever you like to me."

Aziraphale's eyes flashed with fear and he opened his mouth to argue, but Beelzebub cut them both off.

"Whyever would we do that, when we already have both of you?"

Crowley bashed his hands against the barrier until his hands began to sizzle. "Please!" he pleaded. He wasn't the least bit concerned with the pathetic tone his voice had taken. If Gabriel and Beelzebub had figured out this much...he had to protect Aziraphale. He just  _ had  _ to! His wide, terrified eyes honed in on the Archangel. "Please! He's one of you! All he ever did was love the humans!"

Gabriel sneered at that. "Ah, yes, absolutely... _ at the expense of failing to love his Creator. _ "

The sound that came out of Aziraphale, despite his fear of their predicament, sounded a bit like a lion's roar. "I  _ never _ !" he bellowed. "I love Her as much now as ever any angel has, and the fact that I haven't Fallen is proof that she knows it!"

Crowley cringed at the way Aziraphale's words had made the Archangel's eye twitch. He silently willed the angel to shut up before things got even worse. 

Then, suddenly, Gabriel's face went completely calm. 

It was worse.

"Oh, by the way, don't worry." The Archangel's smiling face was all business again. "We're not planning to kill you."

Crowley's heart unclenched just the tiniest amount. Then Beelzebub added, "No...not until we've thoroughly zzzhattered you both, anyway."

As the words left the Demon Prince's mouth, Gabriel snapped his fingers and the runes of the demon trap glowed bright. A searing, bone-deep pain ate through every inch of Crowley's body, burning through him like he'd been doused in holy water from the inside, and he heard Aziraphale screaming his name in the mere seconds before he passed out.   
  


* * *

Anathema was well and truly knackered.

The witch enjoyed Halloween, she really did, even if some of the archaic notions and prejudices rankled her the wrong way. Mostly she'd always managed to push those kinds of thoughts aside in favor of fawning over sweet kids in adorable (and sometimes downright disturbing) costumes. She'd made fresh-baked cookies and candied apples for the children of Tadfield, and had been overjoyed when the Them were her first visitors of the night at Jasmine Cottage. They'd been dressed in handmade space alien costumes with Adam, of course, as the Supreme Leader. Anathema had especially liked Pepper's costume, on which the feisty young girl had hung every toy gun and lazer blaster she could find, with an explanation of, "I most certainly do  _ not  _ come in peace."

Newt had tried (and failed) to scare the children with a werewolf costume he'd purchased in London, Anathema had given them each triple treats for their parts in saving the world, and after a short chat the Them had hurried along to invade other candy-bearing galaxies.

It had honestly been the majority of what Anathema expected for the evening, since she was still so new in Tadfield. But it seemed as though some flood-gate had opened because of the spooky holiday. Every child in town, it seemed, knew of the "occultist" who lived in Jasmine Cottage, and apparently Halloween brought out their sudden voracious  _ need  _ to meet her.

Newt had spent most of the evening chuckling to himself while kids came in droves to ask Anathema all manner of questions; some cute, some amusing, some she knew she couldn't answer honestly without incurring some significant parental wrath later on.

By the time the evening was half past, Anathema had Newt scouring the pantry for anything suitably treat-ish, as she'd long since run out of her homemade goodies.

By the time the last child had disappeared and they'd had a reprieve long enough to believe it was over, the witch felt certain that she could easily sleep for a week.

Luckily Newt's sweetness more than made up for his inability to so much as glance sideways at an electronic without it exploding. 

"Head up to bed," he told her while filling the kettle. "I'll bring you some chamomile." 

"Mmm," she murmured, and leaned in to lay a peck on his cheek. "If we have any sweets left, bring them too."

Newt snorted. "I might be able to rustle up one or two broken biscuits," he chuckled.

Anathema was just leaving the room when a sharp series of knocks came at the door. She sighed and glanced at the clock. "Really now, children, it is much too late at this point."

Newt had moved to answer the knock, but Anathema beat him to it, ready with a gentle admonishment for whichever child was seriously still wandering the streets and visiting witches at this late hour. When she opened the door, however, it wasn't a costumed child she found. It was one fully-clothed in his pajamas, hair a mess. It was one who was clinging to the handlebars of his bike as if for dear life, while a scruffy white-and-black dog whined at his side.

"Adam?" Newt said over Anathema's shoulder. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Adams eyes were wide and worried, not precisely  _ scared _ , but definitely more than a little bit upset. His gaze fell hard on Anathema.

"I had a bad dream," he told her. "And unless we stop it, it's gonna come true."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, what's going to happen now? I wonder, I wonder. 
> 
> Hopefully the next chapter doesn't take as long to get up as this one did, but please be patient with me. :D
> 
> As always, I live for your comments, so please let me know what you thought.
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	4. To Break a Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub intend to shatter the bond Aziraphale and Crowley have created and have worked out a rather devious way to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes! It's, uh...it's been a while. Things have been busy, you guys! But don't worry...it's all written and just needs to be transcribed, so the rest of the chapters should come moderately quickly from here on out. Please let me know what you think of this chapter in the comment section! I live for your reactions! <3
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _Hearts once one, ripped back to two_ **

** _A balance torn asunder here  
  
_ **

* * *

“Crowley!  _ Crowley!  _ Oh blast it all, Crowley,  _ please  _ wake up!”

Aziraphale gnawed at his lip. He tried again to free himself from the shackles that kept him on a short leash, tethered by chains to their cell wall. The chain rattled as he struggled, almost seeming to laugh at him, but it didn’t give an inch. After their captors had trapped them here Beelzebub had carved a dozen or more demonic symbols into the angel’s bounds, “Juzzzt in cazzze.” Gabriel had followed suit, burning angelic sigils long forgotten into Crowley’s chains. Then the pair had swapped places, adding symbols and sigils to the bindings of their own kind, just for good measure. 

To put it simply, unless Aziraphale spontaneously became mortal sometime soon there was simply no way he was going to be able to escape, nor could he save Crowley even if he somehow managed it.

He’d been fighting the crashing waves of panic since the moment Gabriel had activated the demon’s trap and plunged Crowley into unconsciousness. He’d continued to fight it as Beelzebub blindfolded him and yanked on his shackles like a trainer with a disobedient mongrel. He’d even continued to fight it the entire time their captors had been transporting and chaining and mocking them, right up to the moment they’d removed his blindfold and walked away, laughing amid promises to return shortly.

Now...now Aziraphale looked around the sparse, cement block of a room, and at the way his soulmate lay with his face pressed against the floor - so very still - and all that panic rose to the surface in a quake of shaking, shuddering sobs. 

_ It’s all over,  _ he thought through the aching in his chest.  _ We had a few weeks of true happiness, truly being together, and now it’s all over.  _

“D’n...cry...angel…”

Aziraphale’s head shot up and his voice cried out a terrible, wet moan: “Crowley!”

The demon was stirring, eyelids fluttering, but he seemed barely conscious, only making the barest efforts at movement. He managed to turn his head a little so that he was looking in Aziraphale’s direction, and he mustered the tiniest, most pathetic smile the angel had ever seen.

“D’n...cry...we’ll get...get outta this...somehow…”

The demon’s semi-conscious determination only seemed to make the angel cry harder.

“We’re trapped, Crowley,” Aziraphale sobbed. “They’ve got us bound against both our power. We can’t possibly escape. The only hope is rescue, and no one knows where we are! Who would even notice us missing in the first place?”

Crowley’s eyelids fluttered again. “Somehow…” he promised, voice quiet. 

The single door in the room - a heavy steel thing with no windows - chose that moment to open. Their captors strode in, looking distressingly confident. Gabriel raised an eyebrow at the tears streaking down Aziraphale’s face. Beelzebub snickered at the way Crowley blinked dully and struggled to push himself to his knees. 

“What are you going to do with us?” The question had been meant to sound demanding, but Aziraphale’s wrecked voice came out more petulant than anything. 

“Oh, we’ve been thinking a great deal about that,” Gabriel told him through gleaming teeth. “After all, not only did you defy the Great Plan and make a mockery of both Heaven and Hell, but you’ve also defied the very natures of what you are.”

As if they’d planned and practiced this moment, the Archangel and the Prince of Hell snapped their fingers simultaneously. Before they could grasp the significance of what was happening Aziraphale and Crowley shrieked in agony as their wings were forcibly ripped from the ethereal plain to manifest in this horrid place. The violence of it knocked Crowley back down to the floor and sent Aziraphale hard to his knees. 

Gabriel approached Aziraphale and looked down his nose, disgust written on every feature as he reached down and grabbed the bit of black amid all the white. He gave a cruel tug, not hard enough to rip it from the wing but enough to make Aziraphale grit his teeth at the sharp pinch. 

“How could you...defile your celestial body like this?” The manner in which the question was presented suggested the Archangel wasn’t truly surprised, nor expecting a response, so Aziraphale chose not to give him one. He couldn’t, however, resist a bit of a snarl in his former boss’s direction.

Beelzebub was hovering over the collapsed Crowley, tugging at the one white feather the way a child with a nasty streak might use a stick to poke the half-rotted corpse of an animal found on the side of the highway. “Dizzzgusting,” the Prince buzzed. “Tethering yourself to an angel? Could you pozzzzibly  _ be _ any more pathetic?”

Aziraphale growled low in his throat. “Don’t you fucking touch him!” he snapped. For his outburst he received an unrestrained suckerpunch to the back of the head. His body pitched forward and struck the floor hard. The headwound he’d suffered back in the alley split open further, splattering blood across the stone floor. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley cried. From his place on the floor, Beelzebub holding him down with a foot between his shoulder-blades, the demon struggled to slither closer to his angel. “Are you okay?!”

Beelzebub ground their heel hard, eliciting a gasp of pain and stilling Crowley’s movement. “Neither of you are ‘okay’, Crowley. That izzz a dream you will never exzzzperience again.”

Gabriel mimicked the demon Prince with a firm foot on Aziraphale’s wing, close to his body to prevent the angel moving. He leaned down and waved a hand in front of Aziraphale’s face, showing him a vial of something that swirled and shimmered, pearlescent white and yet somehow also the deepest, darkest black. 

“Do you know what this is, Principality?” the Archangel asked, and then immediately plowed on. “Trick question: you couldn’t possibly know because it’s something  _ new _ .”

Beelzebub produced a matching vial and teased in it front of Crowley’s face. “Thizzz is what you get when you combine all the fury of Heaven and Hell into one zzzzolution.”

“We were originally planning to torture you within an inch of your lives,” Gabriel said, frighteningly casual about it, “every day, for eternity, of course.”

“We planned to watch you writhe and zzzuffer,” Beelzebub added, “as we carefully adminizzztered a diluted mixzzzture of holy water and hellfire zzzparks that would have zzzlowly torn you both apart from the inzzzide out.”

“Then,” Gabriel picked up (and oh, you couldn’t have  _ slapped  _ the grin from his face), “you two fools went and did this-” He stomped hard on Aziraphale’s wing where the black feather stood proud. “-and without even realizing it you gave us exactly what we needed to get everything we want: your destruction  _ and  _ the Apocalypse.”

Crowley had been having his face crushed into the floor by Beelzebub’s heel, but at Gabriel’s claim he fought to look up. “What?” he growled, amber eyes shot through with disobedience. “What the  _ fuck  _ are you talking about?”

“A Zzzelestial binding is an exzzztremely powerful bit of magic,” Beelzebub buzzed far too close to Crowley’s ear. “Zzzo powerful that I doubt even you two idiotzzz would have rizzzked it if you’d had half a clue what it could mean.”

“It means,” Gabriel cut in, twirling his vial through his fingers, “that dissolving such a bond would have side-effects of the...world-ending variety.”

Aziraphale’s mind was swirling in a hundred directions at once. He couldn’t decide if he was terrified, enraged, sick to his stomach, or just befuddlingly confused. “Good thing we have no intention of dissolving the bond, right Crowley?”

“Never,” Crowley hissed, though the angel could tell there was a blossom of fear growing steadily behind those amber orbs.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt you two rejects intended to cling to each other for the rest of eternity,” Gabriel agreed, looking like the very thought made him want to vomit. “But I expect you’ll think differently soon enough.” He snapped his fingers and the vials he had Beelzebub had been holding became syringes. 

“Inzzztead of phyzzzical pain, your punizzzhment will be mental,” the demon Prince explained. “And by the time we are finizzzhed with you two neither God nor Luzzzifer will be able to keep you from dezzztroying each other.”

For the first time since this nightmare had begun, Aziraphale smiled, because he was certain this was where their captor’s plan fell to pieces. “That will never happen,” he told Beelzebub without a single waver to his voice. “If your plan rests on us hurting each other, you may as well call it off right now, because that will  _ never  _ happen.”

Gabriel’s smile could have driven the sanest man to madness. “We shall see, won’t we?” he purred into Aziraphale’s ear. 

“Zzzweet dreams,” Beelzebub murmured, plunging their syringe deep into Crowley’s neck. 

Aziraphale shouted out, something indiscernible, filled with rage and sorrow and mind-numbing terror, as Crowley struggled, then slowed, then went still. The demon’s eyes fluttered closed to the sound of the angel’s wails as Gabriel knelt down and Aziraphale felt a sharp intrusion a the base of his neck. 

* * *

  
  


_ Crawly slithered through the Garden with a head full of questions, knowing full well that such things were what had put him in this position in the first place. He couldn’t help it. He was positively flabbergasted. _

_ The first humans, Adam and Eve, had just been expelled from Eden before they’d ever even really had a chance to appreciate it. All because he, Crawly, had orchestrated the First Temptation and convinced Eve to eat that damned apple. _

_ He knew that he should feel elated at a job well done. He’d been specifically ordered to come up here and ‘make some trouble’, after all. But he hadn’t expected such a simple temptation to result in the first ever humans being banned from paradise and, truth be told, he felt rather like shit about it.  _

_ So he slunk and slithered through the beautiful Garden, ignoring all the wonders there were to behold, and took himself up the tallest tree he could find just beside the Easter Gate. _

_ He felt absolutely foolish when he realized what he was doing, but he couldn’t seem to suppress the longing in what passed for his heart. He had to see the angel again before he left this place forever. _

_ He’d seen them all - the four angels who guarded the Garden from high atop its walls - and only this one had sparked some strange, almost painful feeling in Crawly. There was something just so wonderful about his soft, pale skin and white, cloud-like hair. ONce, when the angel had come down from the wall to visit the humans, Crawly had managed to get close enough to see his face. The angel’s eyes were a brighter blue than the cloudless sky, and his smile was more radiant than the sun.  _

_ He was beautiful, Crawly realized, but that wasn’t why he felt this...this  _ pull _ . It was almost as if - as blatantly ridiculous as it sounded - the angel’s soul was calling out to his own. _

_ He had to meet him. _

_ But he couldn’t go in this demonic body. He couldn’t approach one of the Guardians of the Garden in the body of the snake that had brought about Adam and Eve’s banishment. He couldn’t stand the thought of the angel looking at him that way.  _

_ He scrutinized the angel atop the wall through serpent eyes, gaze raking over his human-like body, his loose robes, his positively majestic white wings. Crawly had lost his own wings when he’d Fallen from Heaven, each feature burned away in a fiery agony as he plummeted down, down, father than any other creature in God’s Creation could ever imagine falling. When he’d finally landed, shrieking, in a pit of boiling sulfur, there was nothing left of what had once been a set of pearl-white wings as astoundingly beautiful as those of the angel up on the Garden’s wall at this moment.  _

_ Crawly quite missed his wings. He knew he could never again have the splendid white purity of an angel’s features, but perhaps… _

_ He began the long trek up the mountainous wall with an unfamiliar feeling flitting about in his body and mind: hope.  _

_ As he approached he scented the air and picked up the faint perfume of the angel in the breeze; he smelled like strawberries and fresh grass and, inexplicably, warmth. The combination was heady. It made Crawly feel...comfortable. _

_ At the top of the wall, as he crested the edge of the known world, he allowed his body to shift and change. The serpent became a man, long and lithe, with dark robes and long, fire-red hair that bounced around his head in wavy curls. His eyes remained the same; some things not even an iron will and an excellent imagination could change.  _

_ But he wasn’t worried about his eyes just then, because from his back, as black as the angel’s were white, he’d manifested a truly glorious set of wings. He was a bit giddy with the results, in fact, but worked very hard to school his features as the angel glanced sideways at him.  _

_ “Well,” he said, spitting out the first thing that came to mind as he watched the first humans wander out into the desert. “That went down like a lead balloon.” _

Ugh. So stupid.

_ The angel turned his head just a bit, an eyebrow cocked, a frown on his lips. “Pardon?” _

_ Crawly struggled, but found himself quite unable to come up with anything else, so he repeated himself. “I said...that went down like a lead balloon.” _

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

_ The angel gave him a rather incredulous look. His mouth was a thin line. “I’m sorry, who are you, exactly?” _

That’s wrong…  _ The thought came unbidden. It was a nonsensical thought, but it persisted; a strange feeling that the conversation hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to. _

_ “Um, I’m- Uh…” His mouth suddenly refused to work. “Crawly. Name’s Crawly.” _

_ The angel’s face was just shy of a sneer. It was a jarring look on such a lovely face. “Demon, yes?” he asked through pursed lips. _

_ “Uh-” Crawly stumbled. He suddenly felt quite uncomfortable in this new body of his. “Yes.” _

_ The angel narrowed his eyes. He looked Crawly over, from head to toe, taking a particularly long look at the black wings. A growl worked its way out of his throat, low and cruel: “Disgusting imitation.”  _

_ Crawly felt something hard and cold plummet into the bottom of his stomach. “S-sorry,” he found himself muttering. He lowered his eyes and folded his wings as close to his body as he could manage. He felt so stupid, so pathetic. Why had he ever thought this form would be a good idea? “I didn’t mean- I just thought-” _

_ “Listen well,  _ demon _ ,” the angel scowled, his face a repulsed grimace. “I am Aziraphale, Principality and Guardian of the Eastern Gate, and just because I gave my sword to the humans does not mean that I’m soft or stupid.” He turned to fully face Crawly then, spreading his angelic wings wide. Though he was shorter by a few inches, his presence just then made Crawly feel incredibly small. “I will not sully my ears to listen to the lies and treacheries of the enemy. Now begone from my sight, foul fiend!” _

No, no...that’s all wrong…

_ Crawly took a stumbling step back, a litany of surprised nonsense falling from his lips. He was just trying to work out some kind of decipherable apology when a loud crack startled him out of his skin and suddenly water was pouring down from the sky all around him.  _

_ Aziraphale’s beautiful white wings rose up to shield himself from this new creation. His icy blue eyes glared, uncaring, even hateful, as Crawly stood in shock, getting more soaked with each passing second. _

...it’s all wrong…

_ He felt tears springing to his eyes and loathed himself for it. He couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to have gone, but he also couldn’t wrap his head around how to go about fixing it.  _

...it’s all so wrong…

_ In the end Crawly sank to the wall, falling back into his lowly serpent form, and slithered away as the first rain and an angel’s hatred fell upon him in equal measure. _

* * *

  
  


_ Aziraphale was absolutely distraught. _

_ He couldn’t admit it, of course. After all, this was the Lord’s plan, and the Lord’s plan was...ineffable, even if Aziraphale secretly thought that it was positively horrifying. _

_ “Azsssiraphale…” _

_ The serpentine voice made the angel squeak and jump a mile. When he turned the demon Crawly was slinking around his shoulder with a wide, horrible grin on his face. He was absolutely terrifying to look at. _

_ And oh...something in Aziraphale’s soul longed to reach out and touch him. _

He isn’t supposed to be this way…

_ The thought, uncalled for and illogical, made Aziraphale’s chest feel tight. Crawly was a  _ demon _ , he reminded himself. A heartless creature from Hell’s depths sent to tempt and torment the humans to their eternal damnation. _

_ So why did Aziraphale feel an inexorable pull toward him, like the serpent was holding a piece of his heart hostage? _

_ “Whatever do we have happening here?” the demon purred, his voice low and taunting. He gestured to the Ark, to the people standing about watching in amusement as Noah herded animals onto the massive structure. As Crawly moved he purposely brushed his fingers against Aziraphale’s arms and back, causing cold, cruel shivers to go through the angel’s body.  _

He should be warm…

_ “The, um…” He didn’t know how much he should say, but he didn’t seem capable of keeping his mouth shut. “The Almighty is a bit...miffed. There’s to be a flood.” _

_ A low, rumbling chuckle came from Crawly as he slithered from Aziraphale’s right shoulder to his left. “A flood, is it?” he hissed. “Sssso all the little humansss drown, do they?” _

_ Aziraphale swallowed hard. “Just the locals.” He tried his hardest to make it sound less horrifying than it really was. “Not the Chinese...or the Native Americans...or the Australians.” He gulped again. Lord, but his throat was dry. “And um, not all the locals. Noah, his family, their wives and children...they’re all going to be fine.” _

_ The angel watched as a group of laughing children ran through the crowd. Suddenly the demon had wrapped around him so that his face was far, far too close to Aziraphale’s. “The  _ children _ ?” he asked with far too much glee in his voice. “You’re telling me you’re going to kill  _ kidsss _ ?” _

_ Aziraphale could feel his human body pushing bile up its throat. “Not me!” he cried, indignant. “It’s not my decision! It’s all part of the-” _

_ “Ineffable plan, yesss,” Crawly chuckled with glee. “But you-” He twisted around so that he stood to the angel’s side, looking down at him with yellow eyes that seemed to glow with hot, hateful disdain. “-you aren’t going to lift a finger to help...are you?” _

_ Those eyes bore into Aziraphale, making him feel small, pathetic, and weak. “I- I c-can’t!” he stammered. “I can’t do anything! It’s- it’s God’s will!” _

_ Crowley’s eyes gleamed, his pupils expanded, and he threw his head back in a gale of laughter that was more cruel than the harshest words could have been. “Sssweet, obedient little angel,” he cawed with a devilish joy. “Sssso you’re jussst going to watch the little kiddiesss drown, isss that it? Because  _ God  _ sssays ssso?” _

_ In an instant the demon snapped forward, fangs flashing in Aziraphale’s face and stopping so close that the tip of his nose nearly touched the angel’s cheek. Aziraphale was startled so badly that he involuntarily let out another positively pathetic little squeak.  _

_ “You can’t take the moral high ground on thisss one,  _ angel _ ,” Crawly growled, eyes like flashes of lightning striking Aziraphale’s heart and soul. “If you do nothing you’re complissscit. If you do anything you’re disssobedient. Either way, you can’t fool yourssself. You’re jussst as bad asss me.” _

...but you’re not...you shouldn’t be...you weren’t like this, you-

_ The thought felt like a red-hot poker in Aziraphale’s brain, but he couldn’t banish it, couldn’t cling to it, so he found himself simply staring into the demon’s eyes as his own glossed over with tears. _

_ Crawly held the gaze a few moments longer, until finally he broke the contact with a disgusted noise and a muttered, “Pathetic creature.” He shoved past Aziraphale with one last look of disdain, and as he stalked off he raised his hand and snapped two fingers.  _

_ Near the Ark a unicorn broke free of the caravan and ran back off into the wild. _

* * *

  
  


At Jasmine Cottage, Anathema was serving a shaken Adam Young a soothing chamomile tea while Newt wavered back and forth on whether they should ring his parents or risk being complicit in a housebreak by a 12-year-old.

“Please don’t,” Adam begged. He wrapped his hands around his mug to warm them but didn’t make any move to actually drink. “You can do it later, if you want, but please let me explain first. It’s really important.”

Newt looked between the boy and his girlfriend for a few moments, flitting nervously around the phone, until finally he pulled out a chair at their kitchen table and dropped himself into it with a sigh.

Anathema put a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze before focusing her attention on Adam. “So what’s this all about?”

Adam lifted his cup to his lips, took a small sip, and sat it down before slinking his hands under the table to pet Dog. “First,” he said, “about a month ago I had a weird dream.” His nose scrunched up a little as he said so. “It  _ might  _ have been a dream,” he amended. “It’s a bit hard to decide because there were no pictures, just...feelings.” He looked at Anathema, hoping she would understand. She nodded for him to continue.

“It was like these bright bursts of energy. It was warm and happy and...and  _ right _ , like something had come together...like a puzzle finally being finished after years of a piece being missing.” He thought for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. It was  _ right _ . It was  _ good _ . It felt like two halves of something broken coming back together. And at the center of it all I could feel  _ them _ . It was the same energy I felt from them at the airbase.”

“Who?” Newt asked, interested despite his reluctance.

“Aziraphale and Crowley,” Adam told him as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then he cocked his head to the side, considering. “My dream, or whatever it was,” he said, “I think it had something to with how much they love each other.”

Newt turned pink and Anathema punched him in the arm with a too-pleased grin on her face. “I  _ told  _ you!” she exclaimed.

“I’m suddenly quite relieved your dream didn’t have any visuals, kid,” Newt muttered, earning him another punch, this one significantly harder. 

“Don’t be perverse,” Anathema hissed.

Adam cringed in the way kids only do when adults are being stupid and chose to ignore that fragment of the conversation. “ _ Anyway _ ,” he said loud enough to draw their attention back to the matter at hand. “Whatever it was, whatever I felt, it was a good thing. A happy thing. An...an ‘all is right with the world’ kind of thing.”

Anathema made a pleased kind of hum, not entire unlike the sound a good friend might make watching someone she cared about getting married. Newt turned his head to avoid her seeing the silly little smirk on his face and asked Adam, “So if it was so good, what’s the problem that was so important you had to sneak out of bed on Halloween night to come see us?”

Adam had been sipping his tea while ignoring the antics of the ‘adults’, but now he put his cup down again. “That was weeks ago,” he said, and his face had gone very serious. “Then there was the dream I had tonight. I’d hardly even fallen asleep, and then-” He gulped. “It was  _ not  _ a good dream.”

He took a couple of deep breaths, during which Anathema and Newt exchanged concerned glances. Adam had been pretty much cool as a cucumber throughout the pending Apocalypse, so if this dream had affected him that badly…

“It was dark,” he said. His voice was quiet. At his feet Dog let out a tiny whimper. “They were both there, but they were on their knees, facing away from each other like they didn’t know the other was even there.” He closed his eyes, picturing the scene as it had played out in front of him. “They were surrounded by all kinds of flowers, but as I stood there and watched the flowers all started to wilt and die.” He winced. “And there was...pain. Fear. Sadness.  _ So _ much sadness.” He opened his eyes again and all of those emotions he’d just mentioned were right there, as though he’d felt them as his own. “Then...the world began to end.”

Anathema’s eyebrows rose considerably. Newt groaned and threw his hands in the air. “Didn’t we  _ just  _ do this?” he moaned.

“How do you know?” Anathema asked, gaze steady on Adam’s eyes. “What happened to make you think the world was coming to an end?”

Dog had gotten his head into Adam’s lap at some point and the boy was stroking his fur absently. “Disasters,” he explained. “Natural and...not.” A small shudder. “Earthquakes and tornadoes and tidal waves, but also forests spontaneously combusting and the sky ripping open into tears that spit black flames, and-”

“Wait.” Anathema had interrupted with a raised hand. She was wide-eyed and pale, and looked as though she’d just realized something horrifying. Before Newt could question her she’d pushed her chair back from the table with a screech and took off running for the bedroom.

Newt met Adam’s questioning gaze and shrugged.

A moment later she returned waving a sheet of parchment which she slammed down on the table with authority. She jabbed a finger at a paragraph. “The Earth shall shake, the sky shall split!” she shouted in horrified triumph. 

Newt recognized the parchment and felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh...damn it,” he whispered.

Adam’s brow furrowed. “What is it?” he asked. He reached to slide the parchment toward himself and read it through once, twice, three times, eyes widening a little more each time. “This is about them!” he exclaimed. He met Anathema’s eye, completely and utterly certain in his assessment. “Aziraphale and Crowley! It has to be!” He jabbed excitedly at the first paragraph. “And there was a meteor shower the same night I had the first dream! I remember because it was on the news that night but mom wouldn’t let me stay up to watch because it was a school night.” The boy made a face at that. 

Anathema studied the poetic prophecy over Adam’s shoulder. “‘Neath sky that falls,” she muttered to herself. “So does that mean ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ are Aziraphale and Crowley?”

“That does describe them fairly well,” Newt pointed out.

But Adam was shaking his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. He pointed at a few other lines. “I think they’re the lovers, and it seems like ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ are referring to different people...the ones trying to cause trouble.”

Anathema frowned, but Newt perked right back up. “What about those other two who showed up at the airfield?” he suggested. “The tall one with the jerk face and the short one who kept buzzing? Crowley told me they were from Heaven and Hell. That’s pretty much the definition of ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’, right?”

Anathema’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together. “Yes!” she said, getting excited. “And they were quite unhappy with Aziraphale and Crowley, weren’t they?”

Adam was frowning down at the prophecy. “They’ve done something to them,” he said, quite certain. “Heaven and Hell have done something to Aziraphale and Crowley, and whatever it is, it’s gonna kick-start Armageddon again.”

“And it’s up to us to find them and help stop it,” Anathema added.

Newt made a very unattractive noise. “How d’you figure that?” he cried.

Anathema jabbed at the parchment again. “Ye young people,” she read. “That has to be us. We’re the only ones, besides Miss Tracy and Shadwell, who know what Aziraphale and Crowley really are. Not to mention, I get the impression that we’re pretty much the only ‘young people’ those two know.”

Newt groaned and let his head slam down to the table.

“You better be counting me in on that,” Adam announced. “I’m a young person, and I want to help. So would the rest of the Them, I bet.”

Anathema was making a strained face the moment he spoke. “I don’t know, Adam… You guys are just kids. One of you could get seriously hurt. We don’t know what we’re going to be walking into.”

Adam folded his arms across his chest. As though sensing the shift in his Master’s mood, Dog began to growl. “My powers might not be nearly as strong as they were that day,” he pouted rather effectively, “but I still have them, which is more than you two can say. Plus, Aziraphale himself told me that being a kid is ‘not a bad thing’. Kids can do a lot if grownups would just give us a chance every once in a while.”

Anathema had her mouth open to argue, but was cut off by Newt declaring, “He’s right.” Both the witch and the Antichrist turned to the former witchfinder with eyebrows raised. 

Newt shrugged. “Well he is,” he stated. “Adults are always underestimating kids, telling them they ‘can’t’ without ever giving them the chance to prove it one way or the other. But look at what Adam and his friends have already done, with or without the, uh-” He waved a hand uselessly in Adam’s direction. “-you know… Powers.”

Adam grinned. “Pepper kicked War in the shin!” he said proudly. “No powers required.”

“Yeah, we missed that part,” Newt countered, confused. The ‘personification of humanity’s evils’ bit had gone way over his head when explained afterward. “But I’ll take your word for it and accept it as proof of my point.” He met Anathema’s eye. “We should let the kids help if they want to. Besides, you know if you say no they’re just going to go off and do it on their own. At least this way we’re all together as a team.”

Adam nodded enthusiastically.

Anathema, a look of wide-eyed amusement on her face, held Newt’s gaze for a few moments before giving him a slow nod. “You know, Newton Pulsifer,” she said with a flicker of a smile, “I think you’re going to make an excellent father one day.”

Newt made a very unflattering strangled noise and turned the color of a supernaturally-ripe tomato.

“So that’s settled then,” Adam concluded happily. “What happens next?”

“Next,” said Anathema, pulling the boy’s chair out from the table, “you and Dog go sneak back to bed before your parents notice you missing.”

Adam immediately began to scowl, but this time Newt came to his girlfriend’s defense. “No, she’s right. You’re not going to be able to help if you’re grounded.”

“Besides,” Anathema added, “we don’t even know that this whatever-it-is has actually begun yet. We should try actually contacting Aziraphale or Crowley before we send out the search party, and that part I can handle on my own.” She shooed Adam up out of his chair and toward the door, Dog following close at his heels. “So you go get some rest and fill the others in at school tomorrow to see if they’re in. Newt and I will start with the boring bits and talk to you in the evening.”

Adam looked like he was going to continue to resist, but after a moment of glaring into Anathema’s eyes he finally nodded. “We’ll come here right after school,” he told her, broaching no argument. 

Anathema agreed, and a moment later the boy and his dog were taking off back down the road. 

The witch turned to the witchfinder, and though there were still black circles of fatigue under her eyes she was vibrating with the same kind of manic energy she’d possessed during the (first) Apocalypse. 

“Put the tea back on, Newt. And kindly add a shot of the good brandy. We’ve got work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	5. Our Tale Torn Asunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub's tricks continue to twist and manipulate the shared memories of Aziraphale and Crowley. Meanwhile a small group of humans tries to work out how they're going to help the ineffable pair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter already? Yes! Because I'm trying to get this bloody thing transcribed and out of my way so I can focus on the other half-a-dozen stories I'm writing right now. ^_^;  
Your comments sustain me, so please let me know what you think!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _Will split the skies and shake the lands_ **

** _That once for both were held so dear_ **

* * *

_ Crowley heard the wails as he approached the crucifixion site and wasn’t sure he could bring himself to approach any further. _

_ He needn’t have bothered, really. It had nothing to do with him anymore. His job (or, honestly, the blatant mockery that he’d made of his job) was done. He could just walk away now, move on to somewhere far away from here, and never return to Golgotha ever again. Except… _

_ Except he’d met the young man. Supped with him. Talked to him late into the eve. And, truth be told, Crowley had liked him. He didn’t make a habit of getting close to humans, but he’d foolishly allowed himself to become fond of this intelligent young man who just wanted to spread a message of love and good will. _

_ “He shouldn’t be here,” Crowley groaned to himself, but also a little bit to the God who didn’t listen to him anymore. “Your only son...he shouldn’t be here.” _

_ And so the demon put one foot in front of the other and trudged onward. He quietly slithered past bystanders until he was front and center, his arms wrapped tight around himself, watching his friend scream as he suffered for the sins of all mankind. _

_ It was something to say of his own personal grief that he didn’t even notice the angel standing beside him until he spoke in a rather disgusted whisper. _

_ “What in Heaven’s name are you doing here?” _

_ Crowley cringed and tried his best not to visibly flinch. He tried, also, not to meet the angel’s glare, which was difficult as he’d turned to face the demon bodily. _

_ “Did you hear me, demon?” _

_ Crowley bristled. He did his best to remain calm, but with his friend’s cries of agony and pleas to God ringing in his ears he couldn’t stop himself muttering an indignant, “Your lot put ‘im up there.” _

_ He didn’t look, but he could feel the holy fury burning into him from the force of Aziraphale’s glare. _

_ “You should feel lucky I don’t smite you right here, right now, Crawly,” came the furious growl. _

_ “It’s Crowley.” _

_ A beat of bemused silence. “Excuse me?” _

Shouldn’t have said anything…

_ “My name. I changed it. It’s Crowley now.” _

_ That was the last straw for the angel, apparently, because in the next moment Aziraphale was in front of him, and Crowley felt himself shrinking back, subconsciously lowering himself so that the angel was looking down on him. _

_ “Do you think choosing a new name for yourself somehow changes what you are?” The angel’s tone was as icy as his eyes. It cut through Crowley’s chest like the most finely-honed blade. “You are a filthy, bottom-dwelling _ creature _ , Crawly. You always have been, and you always will be, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change that. Now remove your vile form from this sacred place before I change my mind about smiting you right in front of all these people.” _

_ How could someone who appeared so soft and lovely actually be so hard and cold? _

You’re not supposed to be like this...it’s all wrong...it’s all so very wrong…

_ “He’s my friend,” Crowley begged as another cry rang out. “I- I showed him all the kingdoms of the Earth. He was kind to me.” _

_ Aziraphale’s face twisted into something horrible at that. “One more word about him, demon…” He took a step forward and the look in his eye told Crowley that, yes, he was absolutely ready and willing to do it. “One more word and you’ll feel every second of Heaven’s wrath as though stretched out into an eternity.” _

_ Crowley’s already fragile courage finally fractured. He took a few stumbling steps back, and in the next second he was practically running in the opposite direction as the last few wails floated across the sands to his ears. _

_ “He just wanted people to be kind to one another,” he moaned, miserable. _

...you’re supposed to be kind...why aren’t you kind? It’s all so terribly wrong…

* * *

  
_When he heard Crowley’s voice ordering at the bar, Aziraphale’s heart did a funny thing that he couldn’t have begun to explain. It could have easily been the fear of being quite suddenly closed into a crowded room with the enemy. It could have been an innate, instinctual desire to thwart his foe. But it didn’t feel like either of those things. Despite the unpleasant run-ins they’d had over the years, Aziraphale always felt a strange, unexplained sense of giddy excitement whenever the demon showed up where he was._

_ “I must have a bloody death wish,” he mumbled into his mug. _

_ And yet, as he watched the demon- clad in a black toga and a rather well-suited pair of small black glasses - sit and drink alone, he felt that completely foolish, inexorable pull forward. _

He looks upset about something. I’m sure I could cheer him up, if only-

_ Before he could think long enough to talk himself out of it, the angel was approaching the demon with a grin on his face and his hands firmly grasped around his glass. _

_ “Crawly?” he called, nervous, flushed, quickly recovering himself. “Sorry, Crowley. Fancy meeting you here! Still a demon then?” _

Oh Lord, what is wrong with me? What a stupid bloody question. 

_ Crowley seemed to be having a similar train of thought, but his train was burning with indignant anger. “What kind of question is that?” he barked back, glaring daggers over his little glasses. “Am I still a demon? What else am I going to be? An aardvark?” _

_ Aziraphale chuckled as though it had been an amusing jape and not the frustrated words of a demon who clearly thought him a daft idiot. _

_ “Yes, quite, well, um-” The angel cleared his throat and tried to remember where his focus had been headed before he got so flustered. “I, um… I was going to go check out Patronus’ new restaurant. I hear he does amazing things with oysters.” _

_ His nervous gaze had dropped down to the glass in his hand so he didn’t notice that Crowley had stood up until his shadow was looming over him. Aziraphale looked up in surprise and alarm to find the demon towering above him and standing far too close for comfort. He took a few startled steps back, only for Crowley to follow him until the angel was pressed up against the wall and the demon’s hands were on either side of his head. _

_ Aziraphale made a very undignified sound high in his throat as Crowley leaned in so close that their noses almost touched, before baring his fangs. Those gleaming, yellow eyes stared down at him from over the glasses, filled with malice. _

_ “What do you think you’re playing at, _ angel _ ?” _

_ It seemed to take a long time for Aziraphale’s mouth to start functioning again. “I just- I thought- I mean- You looked...upset, and-” _

_ Crowley cut him off with a harsh snarl. “I don’t need sssymphaty from the likesss of you,” he hissed. “The only way you could improve my mood isss by bleeding for me.” Quick as a flash the claws of his right hand were out and had flashed across Aziraphale’s face. _

_ The angel’s eyes widened in shock. He felt three distinct streams of warm, sticky fluid begin to drip down his cheek and chin. _

_ Crowley grinned, a menacing sight. “Sssee? I feel _ much _ better now…” _

_ Aziraphale reached up with one shaking hand. He pressed trembling fingers to his cheek before holding them out to gape at the ruby-red blood that clung to them. “Y-you...you…” _

You hurt me! You’re not supposed to hurt me! You would never hu-

_ Aziraphale mentally shook the thought away. He didn’t know where these foolish notions kept coming from, but clearly they couldn’t have been farther from the mark. _

_ No matter what the voice deep inside kept trying to convince him of, there was no denying the truth that was staring straight at him with sulfur burning in its eyes. Crowley was a demon in every sense of the word, inside and out. The enemy. The adversary. An evil thing that wanted nothing more than for Aziraphale and the humanity he loved to suffer. _

...so why does it hurt so fucking much to leave?

_ He didn’t know when or how he’d detached himself from the wall, but suddenly Aziraphale was leaving the bar to the jeering, snake-like laughter of his nemesis on Earth. _

_ And it felt like his heart was well and truly shattered. _

* * *

  
When Anathema woke the following morning it was just past noon. She could have used several more hours of sleep.

When it became obvious, around 3 am, that the angel and demon who had helped avert the Apocalypse wouldn’t be particularly easy to track down, the witch and her witchfinder had decided on shifts to allow themselves some small bit of rest. While Newt slept, Anathema had utilized the one major shred of information she knew about Aziraphale and called every bookshop in London, trying to suss out from their after-hours messages which one was his. Though she wasn’t absolutely certain, she suspected she’d hit pay-dirt with the one shop that simply _ didn’t _have an after-hours message. She copied this number down to try again during normal business hours.

(She didn’t know, of course, that there was nothing ‘normal’ about Aziraphale’s business hours.)

When Newt rose and shooed the witch off to bed, he set about trying to contact Sergeant Shadwell, whom he knew had Crowley’s mobile number from their business dealings. Unfortunately the retired witchfinder hadn’t thought to forward his new number along once he and Madam Tracy relocated to their little bungalow out in the country. It had, therefore, taken several calls to track down the owner of the building where both had previously lived, who had been able to pass on a next-of-kin contact for Madam Tracy. Said next-of-kin had passed on nearly a decade prior, but his son was able to pass Newt along to a cousin whom he was certain would have Tracy’s contact information. And she did, but informed him that at the moment Tracy and her ‘gentleman’ were on a lovely little vacation to visit Shadwell’s hometown in Scotland. 

A dozen increasingly more difficult calls later Newt was _ finally _able to get through to the phone in the small Inn where the couple was staying. Former-Sergeant Shadwell had sounded equal parts pleased and annoyed to hear from his young private.

After sharing as little information as possible (he didn’t want to incur Tracy’s wrath should Shadwell get it in his head to cut their vacation short to come back to Tadfield to assist in the mission) Newt was finally able to procure both Crowley’s mobile number and the one for his flat. 

He was just hanging up (Tracy was calling out cheerful pleasantries in the background) when Anathema strolled in wearing a long skirt and one of his too-big button-up shirts, looking like she’d hardly slept at all. 

“Anything?” she asked with an enormous yawn. She reached over to boil the kettle and nudged her head against Newt’s shoulder. 

“Firstly,” said Newt, “please just...don’t even _ look _at the phone bill this month.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips before she could express any concern and plowed forward. “Second, while I was chatting my way across half of Scotland I rang the bookshop again and there’s still no answer. Third-” He held up the piece of paper on which he’d written Crowley’s two numbers. “-would you care to do the honors?”

Anathema grinned, suddenly looked much more lively, and plucked the paper out of his fingers. As a second thought, before snatching up the phone’s receiver, she planted a particularly grateful kiss onto Newt’s lips. The former witchfinder swooned a little and collapsed back into a kitchen chair.

The witch dialled the first number carefully and, after a few rings, was rewarded with a message that was most definitely Crowley: “You know what to do. Do it with style.”

Disappointing, but at least she could leave a message. 

“Hello, Crowley?” she said after the beep. “It’s Anathema Device.” She paused and then, in case he didn’t remember her, added, “Book girl. Anyway, I need you to call me if you get this message. I have some very important information concerning you and Aziraphale and a, well, a possible second Apocalypse. My number is-”

Newt busied himself preparing two cups of tea and passed one over to the witch as she dialled the second number. 

It rang once, twice, three times, and Anathema was about to hang up in defeat, but half a beat after the fourth ring the line suddenly picked up. Her chest surged with triumph, only to sink with horror a moment later as a voice that was definitely _ not _Crowley came through the speaker as though from far away.

“What is this thing?”

Another voice answered from even further away. “It’zzz a phone, I believe.”

“No it isn’t.” Indignant. “It’s...flat. And there aren’t any buttons or cords.”

“It izzz.” Annoyance. “I’ve seen him uzzze it.”

The first voice got louder as the mobile was lifted up. “Hello?” Genuine curiosity. 

Anathema opened her mouth, panicked, and slammed the phone down, ending the call.

Newt raised his eyebrows over his tea.

Anathema snatched up her own mug, poured half of it in the sink, and refilled it with brandy before taking a deep drink.

“I recognize those voices,” she said. “I think we can officially say that Armageddon 2.0 is underway.”

* * *

Gabriel frowned down at the little black rectangle in his hand. “It _ clicked _at me.” He said it as if it were an incredible indignity. Without a single care he tossed the noisy thing over his shoulder. It just barely missed hitting Beelzebub on the head as the Prince crouched beside Crowley with a hand hovering over his head. “Watch it, cloud-dweller,” they grumbled. “And get back over here.” The Prince stood and sneered down at Crowley. “Your zzzuggezzztions aren’t zzztrong enough. Hizzz connection remains zzztubborn.”

Gabriel pulled a frustrated face. “Well it’s not as though you’ve got Aziraphale in top form yet either.”

Beelzebub returned to where they’d original been at the angel’s side, fingers pressed deep into silver-white curls. “He izzz coming along nicely,” the Prince insisted. “The zzzeedzzz of doubt are zzzprouting. He beginzzz to believe the lie.”

Gabriel made a spectacularly childish face behind Beelzebub’s head, but likewise returned to his task, digging his fingers into red waves. “Okay you stubborn bastard,” he growled. “Let’s twist a few more memories and see if we can break that stubborn will of yours.”

* * *

_ It was cold and damp, and quite possibly the most uncomfortable Crowley had ever been. _

_ He shifted in his heavy, bulky armor and grumbled miserably to himself as the lads around him laughed raucously around the fire. Satan, what he wouldn’t give to crawl right into that damn fire right now. This had to be his worst assignment in centuries. _

_ Through the mist the clopping of horse’s hooves approached, prompting Crowley and his entourage to rise and take up their arms. _

_ The rider was one of theirs. “I come with news of travellers,” he announced. “A knight in gleaming white armor approaches from the East. He sends ahead a message: he seeks the Black Knight.” _

_ Despite the cold, Crowley felt a small flush of warmth. _A knight in gleaming white armor? There’s no way it’s anyone else.

_ His head and his heart warred with one another even more violently than the two armies he’d been sowing ferment between. He’d seen nothing but disgust and disdain from the angel over the millennia, yet for reasons he couldn’t explain he still longed to see him. Every time they met something in him truly believed, “This time it’ll go better,” as though all the incidents of the past had somehow been some kind of massive misunderstanding. _

_ Maybe this time would be the one that would prove his foolish faith valid. _

_ It was with this thought in mind that he stepped menacingly out of the heavy mists toward the call of the White Knight and called out in his most impressive voice, “What fool seeks the Black Knight?” _

_ A heartbeat of silence, followed by an incredulous sigh: “Is that you, Crawly?” _

_ Crowley let out a sigh of his own as he flipped up his face-shield. “ _ Crowley _ ,” he insisted. _

_ Aziraphale flipped up his own shield and glared. “It’s Crawly and it always will be, fiend. I should have known it would be you out here. A thorn in my side as ever.” _

_ Crowley stared back at the statuesque armor with growing annoyance. With all that gear on, hiding nearly all of the angel apart from those brilliantly blue eyes, it was easy to forget the nauseating nervousness he usually felt around the angel. “Well it _ is _ my job, you know,” he pointed out. “I am, as you keep helpfully reminding me, a demon.” _

_ Those blue eyes narrowed to mere slits. “You’re undoing all of my good work here,” Aziraphale said in a voice low enough to be difficult to hear. “I am positively suffering in this unholy climate, and you’re just cancelling out everything I’ve been working at!” _

_ Crowley shrugged. His armor clanked rather dissonantly. “Probably come to the same if we just stayed home then,” he suggested. “Just tell our respective sides we did what they asked and-” _

_ All it took was a fraction of a moment, during which Crowley’s gaze flickered down to the ground. Suddenly Aziraphale was upon him, one gloved hand around the demon’s throat, holding him still as he cried out in alarm, while the other held his sword less than an inch from wide amber eyes. _

_ “How _ dare _ you presume to tempt an angel of the Lord into such a blasphemous agreement?” His voice was all righteous fury and his eyes burned of holy fire. _

_ Crowley’s hands were in the air immediately. In his panic he managed to put together enough of a thought to use a demonic miracle to keep any of the humans on either side from interfering. _

_ “H-hey, angel, calm down,” he spoke soft and slow. “I was just running my mouth. D’n mean anything by it.” He was trying very hard to sound calm and composed, but he was shaking like a leaf on the inside. He’d never seen the angel this furious before. _

_ “You’re a _ disease _ , Crawly,” Aziraphale spat. “You’re a low-down, miserable, filthy thing, empty and sick inside. You are _ soulless _ . The only good thing you can do is _ perish _ .” _

_ The pure venom, the visceral sense of hatred in the words Aziraphale spewed caught Crowley completely off guard and caused a flower of agony to blossom in the demon’s chest. _

_ “Y-you can’t mean that…” he whispered. _

...you could never be so cruel…

_ “I can, and I do,” Aziraphale hissed. There was absolutely no mercy in the angel. He looked ready and willing to raze entire continents to the ground to make his point. “Now begun from my sight,” he commanded. _

_ There was a strange sound, and an uncomfortable warmth, and for a few long breaths Crowley wasn’t certain what had just happened. _

_ Then Aziraphale pulled back with a satisfied smirk, and Crowley could see that his sword was wet with blood. _

_ His hand seemed to rise in slow motion. He needn’t have bothered; he couldn’t touch the wound through the layers of steal. But he could _ feel _ it now. A hot, spreading wetness dripping down his body from the neatly cut line in his chest where his corporeal heart had once been. _

_ The demon dropped, clattering to his knees before collapsing entirely, but he never took his eyes off the angel for even a moment. He watched as Aziraphale cleaned the blood from his blade and deftly slid it back in its scabbard. _

_ Then he turned and walked away, not even sparing the demon a second glance as he vanished back into the mists. _

...how can you be so cruel...how could you...how...could…

* * *

_ Aziraphale was a great fan of Mr William Shakespeare and his many wonderful plays. It should have been a lovely thing, therefore, to see that Hamlet was becoming immensely popular. _

_ Patrons came and went, packing the Globe Theatre on every showing, some returning multiple times to bring friends and family members. It was an undeniable hit, and this _ should _ have made the art-loving angel overjoyed. _

_ Instead it only fanned the flames of his depression. _

_ He’d enjoyed the tragedies once, he was certain of it. Such amazing storytelling. Such raw emotion. They were beautiful things even in their depictions of sorrow. _

_ But these days the tragedies were far too much for his heart to handle. Perhaps because he felt like he was living one of his own. _

_ Angels were beings of love, and as such he felt a deep swell of love for all things in Heaven and on Earth. Sometimes he even felt that he was the most loving angel in all of Heaven, considering the majority of the ones Above turned up their noses at anything even remotely ‘human’. _

_ Yet, for some time now, he’d felt lost. Broken inside. It was as if a piece of his immortal soul had gone missing and could not be recovered. _

_ So he stood some distance from the Globe, watching patrons as they left in a bustle of conversation over the ‘sheer brilliance’ of the playwright's recent work, and the angel glowered. _

_ How could anyone enjoy a tragedy when their own heart and soul were bereft? _

_ He sensed the demon before he saw him, slithering out of the shadows to snake alluringly over Aziraphale’s shoulder. _

_ “Ssseen the ssshow yet, angel?” he hissed directly into Aziraphale’s ear. _

_ It was a great feat of personal will that Aziraphale managed not to flinch. “I suppose you had something to do with it becoming such a rousing success practically overnight?” he accused. _

_ Crowley made a sound that could have almost been mistaken for a happy chuckle, but Aziraphale knew better. “I do ssso love the tragediesss.” _

...you didn’t use to…

_ “Of course you do,” Aziraphale sighed. _

_ Crowley slinked around to face the angel and, as had become his tradition whenever they crossed paths, snatched Aziraphale’s chin with thumb and forefinger to admire his handiwork with a slimy smile. “Ssstill there, I sssee…” _

_ Aziraphale only held his gaze, staring deep into those yellow eyes as they peeked up over dark glasses. He refused to show fear, even if being touched by the demon like this made his heart beat wildly every time. He’d left the scars. Those red, raw marks that ran the length of his face from eyebrow to jaw, one crossing over his lips, another turning almost white where it had sliced a shallow tear across his eye. He could have miracled them away. They weren’t wounds born of a hellfire weapon or any kind of demonic curse. They were claw marks, plain and simple. An easy fix, had he wanted to fix them. _

_ He didn’t. He wanted to keep these scars. He wanted them as a reminder. A reminder that, no matter what that strange, stubborn little sensation in the depths of his soul was trying to tell him, the creature before him now was an enemy. He was not, nor would he ever be, a friend, or anything else. _

_ Just an enemy. _

_ Even still, it took an immense show of bravery for Aziraphale to spit out the words, “Get your damned hands off me.” _

_ Crowley’s lip twitched with something akin to amusement but he did, in fact, release Aziraphale’s face. It was a victory; small, but significant. _

_ So why did it feel like an aching loss? _

...it was never meant to be this way…

_ Crowley’s glinting eyes were considering him carefully, as a snake considers its prey before attacking. “No cute little quips today?” he asked, letting his forked tongue flick out to taste the air around them. “No absolutely adorable little attempts to befriend me?” _

_ Aziraphale continued to hold that serpentine gaze, willing himself to look stern and strong and resilient even as, on the inside, he felt cold and weak and as fragile as a dragonfly’s wing. _

_ “No.” _

_ And if he thought that it couldn’t hurt anymore than it already did, he was provely horribly, painfully wrong when Crowley looked truly, unmistakably _ pleased _ . _

_ “You and me,” the demon purred, making a point to let his fangs show. “We’re gonna have it out one day. When the Great War comes, there will only be one angel on the battlefield that I’ll be looking for.” He paused, as though ensuring the angel had enough time to work out the details. “We’ll have it out, you and I, and only one of us will walk away at the end.” _

_ The entire notion was so very wrong that it felt like something feral tearing away at Aziraphale’s soul. _

_ He nodded. _

_ “That one will be me,” he assured the demon. _

_ At that Crowley threw his head back and laughed. It was a loud, throaty, maniacal laugh that sent shivers up and down Aziraphale’s spine and attracted the wary attention of several passersby. _

_ “Perhaps it will,” the demon said when he finally calmed back down. “Hold on to that hatred I see flashing in your eyes and perhaps it truly will.” _

...it’s not hatred for you. It’s hatred for myself for allowing you to become this…

_ He nodded again. _

_ As the demon slithered away - apparently pleased with the nasty direction the conversation had gone - Aziraphale allowed himself to take a deep breath. _

_ He made himself a promise. When it came time...he wouldn’t think, wouldn’t waver, wouldn’t hesitate. _

_ When the day came...he would eliminate the demon Crowley. _

* * *

Newt set out six cups of tea and a newly-bought tin of biscuits on the kitchen table. He watched the Them busy themselves adding sugar and cream in scathing amounts while Anathema looked hard at the page of parchment that tormented her so.

Adam frowned into his cup, letting the steam rise up to great his face without actually drinking any.

“It was definitely them?” the boy asked.

Anathema nodded, brow furrowed. “Hard to mistake the short one, with all that buzzing.”

“Crowley called that one Lord Beelzebub,” Pepper reminded them while taking a bite of a biscuit. 

“The Prince of Hell,” Anathema muttered. “Yes, I can see why that one would be quite upset, what with a demon helping to avert the Apocalypse.”

“He isn’t much of a demon though, is he?” Wensleydale thought aloud. “In love with an angel and all that? And he didn’t seem so evil to me. Just a bit...frowny.”

Newt almost choked on his tea at the image of the children telling Crowley that he’s ‘frowny’. 

“Yes, well,” said Anathema, “I expect he’s a bit like the exception that proves the rule, as it were.”

“The other one’s the same,” Brian pointed out. He had three biscuits in his mouth and was spitting crumbs all over his shirt and teacup. “Azira-whatever. He’s supposed to be an angel, but that Madam Tracy lady had to stop him trying to kill Adam.” He raised his teacup and sloshed a little on the table. “Not very angelic, I’d say.”

Newt reached over with a dish towel to wipe up Brian’s mess and decided it best to just leave it there to collect further spills. “His name is Aziraphale,” he corrected, “and you’re right. He was pretty straight-laced and proper, but definitely a bit more, mmm...impulsive than you’d expect of a literal angel.”

Adam, who had been listening quietly while running his fingers through Dog’s fur, frowned in thought. “Aziraphale said something to me, right before the devil came. He said that I was ‘human incarnate’, not totally good or totally bad, but just...human. He said it was a good thing. Kind of a proper balance, I reckon.” He paused for a second, the idea fleshing out in his mind. “I think- I think the two of them are kinda the same. They went against Heaven and Hell because they didn’t agree with either.”

Pepper took another biscuit and pointed at the table with it. “If the rest of Heaven and Hell are anything like Beelzebub and that twat in the grey suit I don’t blame them for disagreeing.”

“Language, Pepper,” Anathema halfheartedly admonished while continuing to stare at the prophecy. 

Pepper shrugged and popped the whole biscuit in her mouth.

“I think you’re right though, Adam,” Newt mused. “Crowley definitely didn’t strike me as e_ vil _, and Aziraphale sure didn’t strike me as a saint. Maybe that’s why they like each other so much.” He shrugged and lifted his tea for a sip. “But is there a point you’re trying to make?”

Adam frowned even more. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It just seems...important, somehow.” He stuck his finger in his untouched tea and swirled it around, leaving the thought alone for the time being.

Anathema interlaced her fingers beneath her chin and let out a heavy sigh. “Well, I think the most important thing for us to focus on right now is figuring out just where the two of them have been taken, and then we can work on-”

She was interrupted by a soft tremble that made the table vibrate and the teacups clatter. Everyone stopped, staring around the table at one another. Wensleydale opened his mouth.

“Was that-?”

Then, quite suddenly, the entire cottage was shaking, the violence of it eliciting a volley of shouts and cries.

“Everyone under the table!” Newt yelled. In the next moment the children were huddled together beneath the center of the wooden shelter with the adults on either side of them, clinging to the table’s legs for dear life.

All around them teacups and saucers smashed to the floor. The dishes in the cupboards rattled and the clock slid down the wall with a crash. The refrigerator door flew open and slammed shut again, but not before a quart of milk and a jar of yogurt escaped and coated the floor on impact. Outside several car alarms blared and several dogs barked like mad (Dog, who was cowering in Adam’s lap, was not one of them). At least two of the children shrieked, but afterwards none of them would own up to it. 

And just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. At least, for a time.

They crawled out from their temporary shelter tentatively. Dog, realizing the danger had passed, ran over to lap up the spilled milk and yogurt.

“Mind the glass, kids,” Anathema warned as they surveyed the destruction.

From the window above the sink Newt noted that one of the trees in the garden was now draped sadly over a thoroughly splintered bench, and Dick Turpin had tipped onto its side.

“That...that wasn’t a normal earthquake, was it?” Anathema asked aloud. Newt turned to find that she was addressing Adam.

The other children also turned to their leader, their faces part fear and part excitement.

Adam shook his head. “I felt him,” he told Anathema. “Aziraphale. I felt this horrible mix of all kinds of bad feelings, and at the center of it all was him. I think-” He screwed up his face, and it seemed to the others that something in the boy’s heart was breaking. “I think he’s in horrible pain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	6. Crumbling Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley's walls continue to crack and crumble, while in the outside world the planet does the same. Their human companions seek to rescue them from their fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting closer and closer to the conclusion! Only a couple of chapters left now!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _Search ye, young ones, the horsemens' grave_ **

** _Two souls within a wall of stone_ **

* * *

Beelzebub held Aziraphale’s head up off the floor by a fistful of fluffy white curls while Gabriel examined the angel’s eyes. The once brilliant blue had clouded over into a dead, stormy grey that swirled in on itself like a hurricane seen ravaging the Earth from high above the planet’s surface.

The Archangel nodded in reluctant approval. “I have to admit-” (Grudgingly.) “-that is some fine work.”

Beelzebub dropped Aziraphale’s head to the floor with a smirk. “Of courzzze it izzz.” They then moved over to lift Crowley’s head. His eyes were like a dying star in its final moments before the inevitable. Beelzebub frowned at them for a few long moments before dropping the demon as well and sneering up at Gabriel. “Pazzzable. It’ll do,” the Demon Prince conceded. 

“Excellent.” The Archangel clapped his hands together, grinning like a businessman who had just secured an incredibly lucrative merger. “From here on out they should poison their own minds quite thoroughly. All we have to do is wait.”

“I  _ know _ , cloud-dweller,” Beelzebub growled. “I came up with this part of the plan, if you recall.”

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Yes, of course.”

Beelzebub glared at him for a few awkward moments before letting out a sound that was part sigh, part gag. “I zzzuppose your plan for their capture and containment wazzz….effective.”

Gabriel made a strange face as the wheels in his head turned, trying to work out whether he was being complimented or insulted. Eventually he seemed to make a decision and coughed out a, “Thank you,” that wasn’t  _ quiet _ , exactly, but quieter than Gabriel’s usual booming cadence.

There was silence for a time while Aziraphale and Crowley suffered silently in their individual mental prisons. Gabriel and Beelzebub stood over them, apparently having not considered the eventuality of actually reaching this juncture. Had an authority on the matter been present, he or she would have classified it among the all-time most awkward moments in the history of life on Earth. 

“Well!” Gabriel said suddenly (and cringed a little because his voice seemed suddenly far too loud). “I suppose I’d better head Upstairs and rally the troops before the big climax.”

Beelzebub didn’t say anything right away, plaintively nudging Crowley’s head with a booted toe. “Yezzz,” the eventually agreed. “I zzzuppose I muzzzt do the zzzame.”

Unexpectedly (as much from Gabriel himself as from the Demon Prince), the Archangel turned on his heel and offered a hand. “Well. To a plan well-executed.”

Beelzebub stared at the outstretched hand in that bored-annoyed way they often did, but there was a tiny hint of surprise there as well. “Likewizzze,” the Demon Prince said after a pause, without touching Gabriel’s hand.

They did watch the Archangel’s face out of the corner of their eye, though, and thought they saw the tiniest flicker of disappointment.

In the next moment Gabriel was gone, returned to Heaven. A heartbeat later Beelzebub had gone as well, back down to Hell.

In the room they left behind on Earth, an angel and a demon lay, statue-still, hardly breathing, their essences slowly drifting further and further away from one another.

* * *

_ Crowley was utter crap at being a demon. _

_ He knew this, accepted it, because no matter what he’d experienced, been taught, had tortured into him, most acts of evil just felt, well...evil. _

_ He’d admit that he genuinely enjoyed screwing with the humans, tormenting them with acts of pure annoyance that created a ripple effect of low-grade evil throughout the populace. But when it came to the truly horrible stuff, well...humans honestly had that covered all on their own and Crowley was more than happy to take credit in order to keep Hell pleased with him, especially if it meant he didn’t have to actually do the deeds himself. _

_ It was a trick that had served him well, especially considering that the fools Downstairs never followed up on anything, but that didn’t mean Crowley was complacent. No, as a matter of fact, he felt a rather healthy fear that Hell would eventually catch on and that their retribution would be swift and agonizing. _

_ So he began to consider ways to protect himself should Hell come calling someday.  _

_ For a long time he got stuck on this idea of kipping away some holy water. But, try as he might, he couldn’t work out a way of obtaining it without risking his own obliteration. Humans couldn’t be trusted to ensure that not a single drop remained imperfectly contained. Angels would understand the need for the utmost of care but, of course, no angel was about to do him any favors. _

Least of all not…

_ The idea struck him one day like a bolt of lightning from bloody Heaven itself. He couldn’t really explain how or why it came to him, but once it did it seemed so obvious, so perfect. _

_ Hell would never question (or even care about) anything else he’d ever done (or not done) if he did something as rare and incredibly impressive as  _ destroying an angel _ . _

_ Once the thought was there it began to burn in his mind with an almost desperate intensity. Crowley wasn’t much for violence, was even less for killing, but he  _ did  _ have a rather keen appreciation for revenge. _

_ It still felt wrong- _

...this is all so wrong…

_ -in the deepest part of him, but he could no longer deny that he craved revenge on the angel, Aziraphale. _

_ Since their altercation in opposing suits of armor, the angel had developed an almost psychotic taste for discorporating Crowley. Every time the demon managed to return to Earth in a new body he had to avoid Aziraphale like the plague in order to avoid getting sent right back down to Hell. The first few times it had been a frustrating and heartbreaking- _

...you’d never break my heart, would you…?

_ -experience. The following few times Crowley did actually try his best to fight back, but he wasn’t a warrior like the angel and was always inevitably overtaken. Finally the demon resigned himself to slithering around like the snake he was, hiding under rocks and keeping to the shadows to avoid a grisly fate. _

_ It would have been understandable, Crowley thought, if he’d actually done all the horrible things he’d taken credit for an Aziraphale had simply obliterated him from existence in Heaven’s name.  _

_ But any true notion of good and evil didn’t play into whatever was going on between the two. Aziraphale wasn’t routinely discorporating Crowley out of a sense of divine justice or service to Heaven. Crowley could see as much in the angel’s steely blue eyes every time he landed a killing blow. _

_ Aziraphale  _ liked  _ hurting him. He made sport of it, hunting the demon down like prey, cornering him and jabbing barb after barb into him- _

_ You’re Fallen. _

_ You’re pathetic. _

_ You’re meaningless. _

_ You’re  _ nothing _ . _

_ -only to murder his body in cold blood and walk away until the next opportunity arose. Crowley had lost track at this point of how many times they’d played this game, but he did know that he was ready - finally ready - to put himself on the scoreboard. _

_ St James Park was a lovely playing field. Perhaps a little too public, but he wanted the angel to find him, after all. Crowley leaned against a railing in a smart suit and top hat, peering down at the ducks over the top of his dark glasses. Humans milled about, coming and going. It was a lovely day. _

...lovely...and lonely…

_ He sensed the angel’s presence and noted what seemed like a flash of surprise. Though it hardly mattered, since Aziraphale seemed to have a preternatural penchant for finding Crowley, the demon had never just stood out in the open like this when he scented danger. Surely there had to be some kind of trap afoot.  _

_ It took a long time for the angel to finally approach, but Crowley stood quiet and patient, knowing that he would come eventually. He wouldn’t be able to resist. Especially since he was so fully confident that he would always be able to best the demon. _

_ “You must be missing Hell to be so keen on returning to it.” Aziraphale leaned (in a way that could be mistaken for casual but was actually quite calculating) against the same railing as Crowley, a few feet away. _

_ Crowley offered a noncommittal shrug. “No place like home,” he quipped without meeting the other’s gaze. Even without looking, though, he could see the cruel smirk as it appeared. _

_ “It isn’t really home though, is it?” the angel sighed. He flicked a single finger skyward. “Up there...that’s  _ really  _ home. Too bad you’ll never,  _ ever _ see it again.” _

_ Crowley knew to expect horrible things from Aziraphale, but this was a new kind of cruelty that he hadn’t been anticipating. Being reminded of his Fall, being ripped away from the only place he’d ever felt love in any form...a place to which he could never return… _

_ His fist squeezed a little more tightly around the object hidden in his jacket pocket. _

_ “That’s an amazingly cruel thing to say,” the demon said, honestly. For some reason he’d always found it practically impossible to lie to the angel. “Especially for someone who is meant to be a being of love and kindness.” _

_ Aziraphale burst into laughter at that, so loud and raucous that several of the ducks scattered and a passing man chose to pass at a significantly quicker pace.  _

_ “Are you meaning to imply that a  _ demon  _ is worthy of an angel’s Heavenly love?” he scoffed, truly incredulous. “Oh dear Lord, Crawly, you really do have the most pathetic notions at times. I’ve clearly not done enough to put you in your place.” _

_ Crowley did turn now, to face his tormentor, the being who refused him even the tiny courtesy of calling him by the name he’d chosen for himself millennia ago. “Is that what you’ve been doing?” he asked. His demeanor was calm, but inside he felt like he was vibrating faster and more violently with each passing second. “Putting me in my place?” _

_ Aziraphale smiled and shrugged, showing an utter lack of respect for the demon by letting his eyes flutter closed for a few heartbeats as he did so. “Well, that, and breaking up the monotony of life on Earth,” he said with a feral kind of grin. “Don’t know why I bother though, really. It’s not as though I expect you to actually learn anything.” _

_ Crowley’s fingers were trembling around the object in his pocket. “I am fully capable of learning.” _

_ Aziraphale’s eyebrows rose, mocking. “Oh? Are you really?” _

_ Crowley didn’t blink, because that simply wasn’t how his eyes functioned. But they did flutter in something that was close to - but not quite - a blink, and that’s all it took.  _

_ One moment Aziraphale was right there in his eyeline, and the next he was behind him, body pressed up against the demon’s back. One powerful arm wrapped around Crowley’s throat, crushing his windpipe in the vee of his elbow tight enough to destroy any ability to speak or scream. The other hand, quick as a flash, thrust into the jacket pocket and wrapped around the demon’s fist, shattering every bone with a single squeeze. _

_ Crowley opened his mouth to cry out, but nothing happened because there was no breath available to make the sound. Tears pricked at the corners of his widened eyes. _

_ “Did you think I wouldn’t smell the brimstone?” the angel whispered in his ear. He released Crowley’s shattered hand and fished out the hidden flint-lighter, forged from brimstone in a bath of sulfur, designed to spark hellfire into existence with a quick, sharp squeeze of the fingers. It hissed and sizzled against Aziraphale’s holy skin, but he didn’t so much as flinch as he held it in front of Crowley’s face. “You say you learn,” he breathed- _

...too close...never close enough…

_ -into Crowley’s ear, “yet you use pitiful tricks to try to rid yourself of me.” _

_ The elbow at Crowley’s throat tightened a bit more. Crowley felt something crack. It hardly mattered that he technically didn’t need to breathe, because his corporation was panicking regardless. It’s heart rate had gone positively mad. _

_ “I think, perhaps,” crooned the angel, “you’ve grown too used to returning to Hell. It seems I’m going to have to start finding other....methods of  _ putting you in your damned place. _ ” _

_ Aziraphale flicked his brimstone-burned fingers. The flint-lighter went sailing into the pond to be chased by several ducks and one particularly angry-looking swan. Then he released Crowley, and the sudden intake of air caused the demon to drop to his knees, coughing and sputtering. _

…do something, anything, fight back, claw his eyes out, make him hurt, pay him back…

...never hurt him, could never hurt him, why can’t I hurt him…?

_ Aziraphale stooped down beside Crowley and for a brief moment he was terrified that the angel had heard his thoughts. _

_ Whether he had or hadn’t was irrelevant. The angel pushed his fingers through the demon’s hair, almost tenderly at first, and then curled them into a fist, nearly ripping the strands from his skull. He twisted his wrist, pulling Crowley’s head back to expose the tender, reddened flesh of his throat, and forced the demon to look into his spiteful eyes. _

_ “You are a pathetic excuse for a demon,” said Aziraphale with a smile like a madman, “and you were a sorry excuse for an angel. Until you understand that - truly understand that with every last molecule of your wretched existence - you will never get away from me. I promise you that.” _

_ Crowley had his good hand half-raised with no idea of what he was planning to do, and then suddenly Aziraphale was gone. The half-raised hand fell back down, followed by the rest of the demon as he curled in on himself on the walkway of St James Park and let his tears pour down into the Earth. _

* * *

They were halfway to the airbase, the Them tightly packed in the back of Dick Turpin, when the second earthquake hit. Newt was quick to pull over and their combined weight was enough to keep Dick from toppling a second time, but all around them trees were uprooted and fences destroyed. Various animals cried out in alarm. A low, horrible sound seemed to groan up through the Earth itself, as if the land were sobbing. 

When it finally tapered off again the Them were clutching one another with Dog spread across their laps and his nose buried in Adam’s stomach. Anathema had Newt’s hand in a death grip. 

“That one was Crowley,” Adam said in a low voice. No one doubted him. 

“I’ve got even worse news,” said Pepper once she’d extricated herself from Brian’s bear hug. She raised the mobile her mother had given her for her birthday (the boys had all been  _ quite  _ jealous). There, beneath a growing stream of missed calls from all four of the children’s parents (Newt had resigned himself to whatever beating he was certain to receive after this was all over) was a news story. “It’s happening all over the planet,” Pepper explained. “There’s been massive structural damage to the Sydney Opera House in Australia, and the quakes are causing enormous mudslides across different parts of the Americas. Floods in Japan and the Canadian coasts. Sink holes in parts of Russia. Oh damn! Apparently half the Taj Mahal has caved in.”

Newt had pulled back onto the road and was now driving significantly faster than was necessarily safe for his particular vehicle. “We have to stop this,” he muttered under his breath. To Anathema he asked, “Are you sure the air base is where we need to go?”

Wensleydale was the one to answer. “It says ‘the horsemen’s grave’,” he pointed out, referring to the prophecy. “That surely has to mean the place where we defeated the Horsemen, right?” He sounded certain, but he turned concerned eyes on his friends, seeking confirmation.

Adam gave it to him with a slow nod. “It has to be,” he said. “I can feel a spark of them as we get closer. It’s faint, but it’s definitely there.”

Anathema twisted in her seat to look back at the Them, her gaze settling on Adam. “How much time do you think we have?” she asked.

Adam looked out the car window at the felled trees they raced past, a frown pulling at his lips. “Hard to say,” he said after a few moments. “Crowley’s quake was worse than Aziraphale’s, but I think they’re both going to get much worse yet.” He considered for a moment more and glanced up at the darkening sky swirling with grey clouds. “When the sky starts to split it’ll be nearly too late.”

Nobody asked how he knew.

* * *

_ All Aziraphale wanted was to help. _

_ He’d seen many wars in his lifetime on Earth, and they never failed to pain and dishearten him, but he felt certain that this one was the worst he’d experienced. The atrocities the Nazis had committed - and surely had yet to commit - were among the most gut-wrenching he had ever had to face. It broke his immortal heart every moment of every day that the war raged on. _

_ So when he caught wind of an opportunity to assist, he was more than willing. It seemed a simple enough plan that even he should have had no trouble executing. The Nazis wanted books of prophecy. In the running of his bookshop in Soho he had hunted down a rather impressive collection of books of prophecy. So he would meet with a pair of these monsters under dark of night, with some of Britain’s finest waiting in the shadows to take them down.  _

_ That was how it  _ should  _ have gone. Instead, Aziraphale found himself at gunpoint by the very woman who had recruited him for this mission, while two particularly gleeful Nazis strolled out into the night with his precious books.  _

_ He thought about pleading with the gun-woman, or even just miracling her to sleep, but in that moment he was simply too depressed and too tired to bother. It wasn’t as though he had any reason to stay on Earth. Perhaps he should just...give up. Leave the humans to deal with their own existences. Maybe being discorporated for the fourth time in as many centuries (he knew he’d never live down the French Revolution) would finally convince Gabriel that he just wasn’t fit to be a Principality.  _

_ In fact, maybe he wasn’t even fit to be an angel at all. He’d certainly been told so a number of times by- _

_ “You can no, mein frau. Leave this one to me.” _

_ The voice made Aziraphale’s blood run cold. It couldn’t be- He wouldn’t- _

_ He would. Strolling up the aisle as his faithful German subordinate scurried past him, was Crowley, his yellow eyes burning beneath the rim of his wide-brimmed black hat. _

_ “But- but-,” Aziraphale stammered over his own tongue, gaze flicking around the room to confirm he hadn’t magically transformed it into something else. “But we’re in a church!” he finally managed to exclaim. _

_ The grin that spread across the demon’s face was truly psychotic. “Oh yesss,” he hissed in a bonechillingly pleased kind of way. “The pain in my feet right now his quite ssspectacular. But I sssimply couldn’t resssissst the opportunity to sssee your face.” _

_ Aziraphale didn’t know why the realization hurt so deeply - he should have known that the demon was in league with the Nazis, truly - but he couldn’t ignore the bone-deep ache in his body as the words sighed out of him: “Of course...you orchestrated all of this.” _

_ Crowley leaned casually against a pew. He seemed entirely unperturbed by the way the hand that touched it hissed and smoked. “Das Fuhrer wanted books of prophecy,” he explained with a flick of his forked tongue. “Whoever was I to think of but Mr A.Z. Fell and his glorious book collection, just ripe for the taking?” _

_ Aziraphale felt incredibly tired. With his eyes burning and his body aching he waved a hand in the direction the double-agent had scurried. “Why didn’t you just let her discorporate me then?” he asked. “Isn’t that what you do? Cause great atrocities just to see me get caught up in them in the worst possible ways?” His gaze landed on a font of holy water some thirty feet away. He wondered if he could get to it on time. Wondered if it was worth bothering. _

_ Crowley extracted his smoldering hand from the pew, approached the angel from an angle that blocked the path to the font. “Maybe I just felt like doing the deed myssself thisss time,” he posited. As he got closer he reached up with his burnt and blistering hand to run his fingers across the angel’s face, across the scars Aziraphale rematerialized no matter how many new corporations he was forced to move through. “Maybe I jussst had an urge to sssee my angel.”  _

...your angel...only yours...always yours…

_ A sob very nearly ripped out of Aziraphale then. He couldn’t have explained why, but something about those words from Crowley’s lips felt like a thousand sword strokes to an already battered, bleeding heart. He managed to choke back the sob, but he couldn’t stop the tears that rolled silently past his scars and onto Crowley’s fingertips.  _

_ “What do you want from me?” the angel whispered.  _

_ Crowley turned his hand, pressed it flush against Aziraphale’s wet cheek. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and for a moment the touch almost seemed pensive and comforting. Then he drew the hand away, lifted it to his lips, and flicked out that serpentine tongue to lap up the tears.  _

_ “Thisss,” he told the angel, with a look of pure, debauched euphoria in his eyes. “Jussst thisss, my angel.” _

_ He turned and walked back the way he’d come, past the holy water font without a care, wiggling his burnt, tear-streaked fingers in farewell as he went. _

_ Aziraphale sank to the floor and wept until the last of the bombs fell on the east side and the sun rose over a battered and broken London. _

* * *

They made it to the airfield without further incident, but the sky was getting darker and stormier, and Pepper kept up a running commentary on the numerous disasters that were presently occurring all over the planet. 

Massive fissures swallowed up chunks of Beijing.

Whirlpools in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans had devoured numerous military and pleasure vessels. 

Hawaii and parts of Cuba were gone - just  _ gone  _ \- sunken into the watery depths as though they’d never been. 

Anathema wanted to ask if there was any chance that Adam would be able to fix the world the way he had after the first Apocalypse. She didn’t. She was certain she already knew the answer and didn’t want to make the boy say it aloud.

The fence had collapsed (as well as the attached guardhouse) in one of the earthquakes, so Newt threw caution to the wind and drove Dick Turpin right onto the base. He needn’t have been concerned anyway, as it had been abandoned sometime less than a year ago, but his unexpected action impressed Anathema none-the-less.

“Where are we going, precisely?” the rattled driver asked. 

“Not sure,” the witch replied, biting her lip. “The prophecy says ‘neath the horsemen’s grave’, so it must be underground somewhere around here.” 

They were close now to where the showdown had occurred, and Adam was nodding furiously. “Yes...yes,” he provided. “They’re definitely here somewhere. They’re together, but-” He paused and frowned. “-somehow not. It’s weird. Their energies have changed somehow, like they’re not quite who they were before.”

Everyone exchanged looks of concern at that. 

“They’re not going to be...dangerous, are they?” Brian asked as they were piling out of the car.

“I don’t think Aziraphale  _ can  _ be dangerous,” Wensleydale offered. “Not really. He’s so pleasant.”

“He almost killed Adam,” Brian reminded his friend. 

“I don’t really think he would have done, honestly.”

“He  _ did  _ pull the trigger. It was Madam Tracy who made sure it missed.”

“Well he  _ did  _ think that it was the only way to save the whole world.”

Pepper piped in with a thoughtful look on her face. “ _ I  _ don’t think  _ Crowley  _ is capable of being dangerous, myself. Demon or not, he’s too soft on Aziraphale. And kids. Remember he walked us all home afterwards to make sure we got there safe?”

Adam interrupted, ending the debate with a flat, no-nonsense voice. “Neither of them is dangerous,” he insisted. “At least, not to any of us. But they’re getting more and more dangerous to the world by the second, so let’s get to it, okay?”

Anathema and Newt had already tentatively opened the door to the nearby bunker when the children nodded to one another and scurried to join them. The power was still on when they strode inside (“Expect they like to keep places like this prepared and ready to go in case they’re needed at a moment’s notice,” Newt thought aloud), but all the computers were shut down and it was all very still and quiet. Anathema wondered if the US officials had even bothered to repair what Newt had destroyed before they up and left, or if Adam had inadvertently fixed everything in his ‘reset’. She didn’t bother asking this either. It hardly mattered now.

It wasn’t an overly large compound, so they spread out, peeking in doors and looking around for signs of recent habitation. They didn’t find much at first - dusty monitors, abandoned coffee mugs, a scattered deck of playing cards. There were a few other rooms, including a large lavatory and a lunch room, but nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. 

“We should check the other bunkers too, I suppose,” Anathema suggested with a frown. 

Adam, however, was shaking his head. “No, it’s got to be here somewhere,” he insisted. “I can  _ feel  _ them. They’re so close now.”

The words had barely left his mouth when another earthquake struck; an especially powerful one. Computers and monitors that had previously survived due to being fixed to their tables met their reckoning when beams and brackets were ripped clear from walls and shelves and ceiling. Coffee mugs shattered on the floor, and sparks began to fly as several electrical conduits were torn in half as the walls cracked and split.

There were more than a few screams, but above them all came Newt’s triumphant shout. As destruction rained down upon them all he yanked open a trapdoor that had gone unnoticed and, panicked and unceremonious, they all leapt in without hesitation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	7. Not Fast Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last of Crowley's resistance strips away with an already-painful memory twisted with fear and shame.   
Meanwhile, the humans make a discovery but aren't sure what to do with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter this time, but don't worry, I've got everything typed up now so the rest of the story is coming fairly quickly. ^_^
> 
> Also, FYI, before someone brings it up: yes, I forgot the Bastille scene when writing Crowley and Aziraphale's dream-memories. I have no idea how it happened, but by the time I noticed trying to sneak it in would have been difficult to say the least, and I didn't want to put off the rest of the story anymore than I already had. :P
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

**Awaken they whose loyalty gave**

**To earthbound creatures gifts unknown**

* * *

  
  


_ Crowley bid the strange (but possibly useful) Sergeant Shadwell adieu and strolled leisurely toward his Bentley. He felt nervous, but determined. The heist would work, he told himself. No problem. As long as the human’s he’d hired were very careful and followed his instructions to the letter… _

_ He didn’t believe they would, to be honest, but at this point he believed it worth the risk. _

_ His previous concerns about getting caught out lying about the sins he had and hadn’t influenced had taken a backseat to more pressing matters. Namely, that it was bound to get out sooner or later that he was being tortured, tormented, and having the ever-loving shit kicked out of him by an insane angel. _

_ Being discorporated on the regular had been bad enough, but at least he could blame some of those incidents on nasty showdowns between mortal enemies or on the occasional temptation-gone-wrong. _

_ But eventually other demons were going to start to notice the scars that ran deeper than his corporeal form. Wounds cut with holy weapons so that he was unable to heal them combined with psychological wounds that had him jumpier than a jackrabbit whenever he sensed anything at all non-human within a hundred square mile radius.  _

_ Aziraphale had made good on his threats since that day at the park. He’d traded up on simply sending Crowley back to Hell and now had a standing challenge with himself to see how much damage he could do before the demon broke down completely. And if Hell found out about that - about how useless and pathetic he truly was, how nearly every inch of skin beneath his clothing had been burned and sliced and flayed - they wouldn’t hesitate to find a more suitable...use for him. _

_ So a heist it was. A heist to secure holy water with which to protect himself if it came down to it. _

_ He should have known Aziraphale would be in the car waiting for him once he’d shut the door. As it was, he wasn’t particularly surprised, but he also couldn’t quite stop the flinch. _

_ “What do you want?” he sighed (though it came out as more of a whimper).  _

_ Aziraphale’s smile was positively pleasant, but Crowley could see the edge in it. “I’m not an idiot, Crawly,” he admonished. There was a slight twitch in his left eye. “I live in Soho. I hear things. I know what you’re up to.” _

_ Crowley deigned to close his eyes for moment but decided against taking a deep breath. “Oh, and I suppose you’ve come to stop me, have you?” _

_ He couldn’t possibly anticipated the angel’s response. _

_ “Oh, quite the opposite, actually. Steal all the holy water you want, I say! In fact, strut into Hell with a garden hose of it if you’re so inclined.” _

_ Crowley opened his mouth, closed it again, and opened it once more. “What?” he said, inelegantly. _

_ Aziraphale waved a hand as if to brush off his disbelief. “Yes, yes, wage your own personal war against them for all I care,” he laughed. “I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be watching.” _

_ It was a threat, there was no doubt about that, and that made it a much more expected thing to hear, but it also left Crowley more confused. “Watching?” he managed to ask. “I don’t...I don’t understand.” _

_ Aziraphale turned in his seat then. He reached out a hand, and Crowley couldn’t help the panic that had him slamming himself back against the driver’s side door, eyes wide behind his black glasses. _

_ Shockingly, Aziraphale’s touch of his cheek was gentle. Soft. Practically a caress.  _

_ “I’ll be watching to make sure you don’t make any mistakes, of course!” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’d be ever so upset if you were to accidentally get some of that holy water on yourself, my dear.” _

...my dear…my dearest...my darling...my love...

_ Crowley closed his eyes against that voice in his head. It had never done anything but cause him pain. _

_ “Why?” he found himself asking. _

_ Aziraphale’s finger trailed down to Crowley’s neck, chest, stomach, thighs...all places that bore the evidence of the angel’s secret sadistic nature. So many scars burned into him for all time. Marks that laid the angel’s claim to him: ‘this one is mine’.  _

_ “Why, because I’d be so sad to lose my plaything, of course,” he finally said, just as sweet as pie. In that same moment his fingers twisted into a fistful of Crowley’s jacket and yanked him forward, driving his hip into the Bentley's gear shift. With his other hand he snagged a fistful of hair at the nape of the demon’s neck and pulled hard to force him to look up. “So you’re going to be very, very careful, am I clear?” Aziraphale purred. “Because if I get even the tiniest impression that you might be considering ending it all, I  _ will  _ stop you, and you  _ will  _ be punished, severely. Your punishment will, in fact, make everything else you’ve experienced feel like a walk through the Garden by comparison. Are you understanding me, my dear?” _

_ Crowley wanted to throw up. He wanted to kick and scream and lunge at the angel to rip his throat out. Part of him wanted to cry because he had, indeed, considered the possibility of taking the easy way out.  _

_ He did none of those things. He simply used the limited slack Aziraphale allowed him to shake out a jerky nod.  _

_ The angel flashed a truly disturbing thousand-watt smile before releasing Crowley and giving him a little amicable pat on the shoulder. “Good boy,” he said, and moved to leave the car. _

_ Crowley was positively vibrating inside (with rage, or fear, or sorry, he wasn’t certain) when Aziraphale paused at the open door and leaned back in for one last warning: “There’s no escaping me, my dear,” he intoned. “You simply don’t go fast enough.” _

* * *

Dust, dirt, and small chunks of splintered wall rained down on the group of six as they stumbled down a long, dark tunnel under a government installation in the middle of an Apocalypse. The earthquake raged around them, knocking them into the walls, the ground, each other. Newt felt a thrill of panic that, in shepherding them down here he may have condemned them all to being buried alive.

Then, finally, the shaking stopped again and they had a moment to breath. They could just barely make each other out by the glow of Pepper’s mobile, but Adam could see all heads turn to him. 

“That one was both of them,” he said with a grimace. “The sky will be soon.”

“We’ve got to hurry,” Anathema urged, pushing her way to the front of the pack. “Let’s go. I see something glowing down that way.”

In single file, standing rather close to one another to avoid separation, Anathema lead them down a long hallway lined with steel doors. They could have been interrogation rooms or broom closets for all this group knew, but the witch and the Antichrist were both quite certain that one of them contained exactly what they were looking for.

“Here,” Adam said with certainty. “This is it.”

They were stood outside the only door whose electronic lock keypad was lit up.

“We need a code,” said Wensleydale, examining the numerical buttons.

“No we don’t,” Anathema assured him, and shot her boyfriend a winning smile. “We have a skeleton key.”

Newt stared back for a second before sighing and throwing his hands up in exasperation. “This can’t be all I’m bloody good for,” he grumbled.

“Of course not dear,” Anathema hummed.

Newt purposefully jabbed at the numbers he told himself were the most commonly used for passcodes, and then stepped back as the display promptly popped, hissed, and emitted a thick trail of smoke.

The door unlatched. Anathema gingerly pushed it open.

Light, harsh and clinical, poured out of the room. 

Adam was the first to rush forward, having seen the angel’s and the demon’s wings before and not been shocked frozen by the sight of them sprawled across the floor around the two beings’ bodies. The Them quickly recovered and followed, but together the four children simply stood between the angel and the demon, uncertain how to proceed. 

“They’re...they’re not dead, are they?” Wensleydale asked in a small voice, looking quite pale.

Pepper was crouched down with her head sideways, peering at Crowley’s still form. “I can’t tell if he’s breathing,” she offered. 

Newt rushed forward to kneel at Aziraphale’s side, fingers to his throat. “I can’t find a heartbeat,” he said, panicking. Then he turned to Adam. “Do angels and demons  _ have  _ heartbeats?” she asked.

“Only when they want to,” Adam replied with a frown. 

Newt’s brow furrowed. He turned his next question toward Anathema, only to find her still standing in the doorway, eyes wide and horrified. “What’s wrong?” he quickly asked.

Anathema looked at him, then Crowley, then Aziraphale. She gulped audibly. 

“Their auras,” she said after a beat. “They’re all wrong.” Shaky feet moved forward, one step, then another, as she gazed at something in the air that only she could see. “An aura should be one or two colors, maybe three or four fading in and out of one another if the person is conflicted or upset about something.” She reached out a hand as though to touch the invisible fields of emotion. “The last time I saw these two their auras were nearly identical. Relief and excitement, tamped down by fatigue and worry.”

There was a pause before Pepper asked, “What do you see now?” For the first time any of them could recall, the fierce, outspoken girl’s voice was surprisingly soft.

Anathema shook her head slowly. Her outstretched hand dropped back down to her side. “A storm,” she finally said. “Two sides of a terrible storm raging between the two of them. It’s as if their spirits were trying to destroy one another.” 

The others exchanged concerned, confused glances, but Adam was nodding. He approached Aziraphale cautiously as one might a wild animal that could strike at any moment. He bent down to touch his hand to the angel’s head.

“The other two did something to their minds,” he said, frowning, concentrating. “It’s all wrong inside. The wrong thoughts and feelings...like the past of their memories has been rewritten.” He frowned more deeply and moved over to ‘read’ Crowley as well. “They’ve been aimed at one another like weapons. I can feel hurt and anger and fear…” He lifted his head and shook it sadly at Anathema and Newt. “I can’t sense any of the goodness from a month ago.”

Anathema bit her lip and thought hard. She’d thought just finding the angel and demon would have been enough to turn things around, but she hadn’t been expecting to find them catatonic with their spirits visually attempting to devour one another. “Let’s get them out of those shackles first,” she suggested.

“We don’t have the keys,” Newt pointed out.

But Anathema was already crouching next to Crowley’s arm, examining the sigils. She ran a finger over one. “These markings are supernatural in nature,” she explained. “They mean nothing to a mortal being. Less than nothing, really.” To demonstrate she lifted the shackle and easily popped it open with her bare hands.

“Huh,” said Newt. “I guess the other two didn’t consider the possibility of humans coming to the rescue.”

The Them rushed forward to help remove the rest of the shackles. “They do that a lot,” Adam was saying in an off-handed kind of way. “Underestimating humans, I mean.” As he and Wensleydale were pulling part the last of Aziraphale’s bounds, Brian noticed something and frowned. 

“Hey guys?” he said, pointing down at the huge expanse of features laying around the angel. “How come Aziraphale has a black feather?”

Curiosity piqued, the all looked to where the boy was pointing. A single shiny black feather stared back at them from where it was nestled among a sea of white. 

“Crowley has one too!” Pepper pointed out. “A white one, I mean.”

Adam looked back and forth between them. “They….traded…” he said slowly. 

He’d barely finished speaking the words when Anathema shouted and clapped her hands together, causing a shockwave of little yelps to go through the other humans. “That’s it!” She turned shining eyes of understanding on them all. “It’s a soul-binding!”

She received blank stares for her epiphany. 

“I’ve only read about it,” she went on as though no one at all was looking at her like she’d sprouted extra heads. “It’s a very ancient ritual that was exceptionally rare, even among immortal beings. The practice is where the idea of marriage originated, but the true ritual was dangerous because the psyche can’t handle it unless the pair who perform it are already extraordinarily close. Humans who attempted it inevitably went mad.”

The Them only looked more confused. Newt strode to Anathema and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Dear, maybe skip to the part that’s significant to this specific situation?”

“Oh, oh sure,” the witch muttered. She fixed her glasses and cleared her throat. “Basically, it’s the ultimate bond you can make with someone you love. It’s an unbreakable empathic link, forged by sacrificing a piece of yourself to your Other and receiving a sacrifice in return.” She gestured to the feathers. “They each exchanged a feather, you see?” Her gaze met Adam’s and she nodded to the boy. “That must be what you felt last month. There would have been an enormous outpouring of spiritual and emotional energy as their souls intertwined. Someone with your kind of background would have been able to sense that from miles off.”

Adam’s head cocked sideways in thought. “That  _ does  _ make sense,” he allowed.

“But how does it relate to what’s happening now?” Newt asked, waving his hands in the air in exasperation. 

Anathema pulled the prophecy out of her pocket and frantically unfolded it. “Two hearts once one, ripped back to two,” she read aloud, giving Newt a pointed look. “It’s supposed to be an  _ unbreakable  _ bond, but whatever Beelzebub and the other one did, they’re trying to break it.”

Adam snapped his fingers. “I get it!” he exclaimed. “The wrongness I’m feeling, it’s because their pasts are being rewritten in their own minds! Their memories have been changed to destroy how they feel about one another.”

Anathema pointed at him, nearly frantic now in her excitement. “Bingo! If you take away the love, you invalidate the bond. Boom, unbreakable bond broken!”

The wheels were spinning in Newt’s head, but he required one more piece to complete the puzzle in his mind. “So what happens when you break something that’s supposed to be unbreakable?”

“To put it simply,” said Anathema with a grimace, “you rip hopes in reality. In our case...Armageddon 2.0.”

There was silence. Then Wensleydale whistled. “Man, those two  _ really  _ must want their war if they’re willing to rip holes in reality.”

“Pretty sure it’s literally the only thing they care about,” Adam sighed. “That, and punishing these two for helping stop it in the first place.”

“So how do we fix this?” Newt asked, echoing what was in the mind of every other human in the room. “How do we un-break the broken unbreakable bond?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	8. Do Something, Or...!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A battle between angel and demon, while the armies of Heaven and Hell watch and wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go...it's about to get real...
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

**Should two to one unite once more**

**White to Black and Black to White**

* * *

  
  
They walked out onto the airbase tarmac to find the War to end all Wars waiting for them.

The sky was a swirling, living thing of black and blood-red, twisting and writhing and pulsating above them. The concrete beneath their feet was cracked and split, and in some places there were great, gaping chasms that had devoured entire bunkers. 

And standing to the East were angels; to the West, demons. A mile or more of distance stood between them, but they stared each other down as intensely as if they’d been face-to-face. There were untold numbers of each, stretching as far as the eye could see, perhaps farther, perhaps even more of them than could theoretically fit within the space they were occupying. All, ready to fight. Ready to kill. Ready for the end of the world.

Here, at the center of it all, four human children and two human adults still young enough to be considered children to some, came into sight, dragging an angel and a demon who’d wanted nothing more than to live peacefully together.

“Whatever we’re doing, we better do it fast,” Newt muttered, vibrating with nerves. “Looks like the party is about to start and we’re right in the middle of it.”

As they lay Aziraphale and Crowley on the hard ground, mindful of their wings, Adam placed a hand on each of their heads. “I...I think I can wake them,” he said. “Just...gimmi a minute-”

“It won’t change a thing.”

Their heads whipped to the annoyed voice that rumbled with a faint buzz. Cold dark eyes glared down at them (quite a feat, considering the owner of said eyes was somewhat shorter than half of those gathered). 

Anathema did her best to stand up straight and proud and defiant. “Lord Beelzebub,” she said in a tone that was part polite greeting, part the vocal equivalent of spitting in someone’s face.

Newt tapped the witch on the shoulder and thrust a thumb in the opposite direction. “The other one’s here too.”

‘The other one’ bristled in a magnificent show of overblown self-worth. “I am the Archangel _ fucking _Gabriel!” he growled.

In an uncharacteristic show of bravery (or perhaps it just slipped out before he could stop himself) Newt snorted and responded with, “Congratulations, mate, but how about checking the language, eh? There’s kids present.”

Everyone was staring at Newt in shock, so no one was looking when Beelzebub let out a rather amused snicker.

“Children, indeed,” Gabriel sneered. “And just what exactly are you and your children doing with my hostages?”

“_ Our _hozzztagezzz,” Beelzebub interrupted.

“Yes, yes, fine, _ our- _Wait.” Gabriel paused and squinted, waving a hand in Adam’s direction. “Aren’t you the Antichrist?”

Beelzebub leaned to the side to see around the witch. “Yezzz. Yezzz it izzz.”

Pepper had both her eyebrows raised at the display. “Proper brilliant pair, these two,” she muttered. Brian and Wensleydale nodded enthusiastically. 

“There izzz nothing you can do to stop what is coming,” Beelzebub drawled. “Zzzzo why don’t you humanzzz juzzzt run along and leave the two traitorzzz to uzzz, hmm?”

“Yes, scurry along now,” Gabriel added. He was waving his hands in a ‘shooing’ motion, as though trying to banish a pest. The humans bristled, but Dog in particular growled at the implication. “The War is about to begin, and these two have more suffering ahead of them once it’s won.”

A low, hungover-sounding kind of groan was the response that captured everyone’s attention.

“What happened?” Aziraphale moaned into his arm. “I feel rather like I’ve been bashed about the head.”

Adam whooped triumphantly as the angel pushed himself to a sitting position, hand over his eyes. A moment later Crowley stirred as well, emitting a sound a bit like the snort one might emit when being frightened awake. 

There was a chorus of congratulatory sounds from the Them and thankful sighs from Anathema and Newt. _ It’ll be okay now _ , Anathema thought, _ I’m sure it’ll be okay now. _Then she noticed the disconcerting grins on the faces of Beelzebub and Gabriel.

“This changes nothing, foolish humans” the Archangel assured them. “Waking them was all part of the plan anyway.”

“Crowley!” Beelzebub shouted a command. 

The reactions were instantaneous. Crowley’s head sprang up, eyes burst open, and after only a cursory glance at those who had gathered around him he scrambled to his feet and practically threw himself before the Demon Prince. “Yes, Lord Beelzebub,” he proffered. “Sorry, I seem to have, uh- I’m not sure what-” He squinted his yellow eyes around the scene in abject confusion. 

Meanwhile, Aziraphale’s head shot up at the sound of Crowley’s name. Fearful eyes scanned the surroundings before, much to the dismay of the humans, the angel quickly joined the Archangel’s side. 

“What are you two doing?” Adam exclaimed, but the reawakened pair scarcely seemed to notice the presence of the humans. 

“Gabriel, sir,” said Aziraphale, proper as could be despite an air of utter confusion. “I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss. What exactly is happening?”

Gabriel’s grin was as wide as could be. “Why it’s the War, old boy!” he announced with a clap of a meaty hand on the angel’s back. Then a sly, sinister look passed across his face. “And _ you’ve _been chosen to start it!”

Aziraphale sputtered as though he’d just been informed he was going to dance the Gavotte in front of God Herself. “W-what?” he blustered, gaze flickering about frantically as though expecting the punchline to a joke any second. “W-why on Earth- That is to say, I mean… Why me?”

Gabriel wrapped his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders like they were the best of friends. “It has been recognized by Heaven that you have been quite steadfast in your service to our Lord, despite millennia of antagonizing at the hands of the demon, Crowley. Therefore Heaven has decided that your smiting of him-” He waved a hand across the makeshift battlefield. “-will open the War, so to speak. A kind of ceremony, you see?” He gave the flustered angel no chance to consider these words. In the blink of an eye he was holding a sword, which he immediately thrust into Aziraphale’s shaking arms.

Less than thirty feet away Beelzebub was buzzing commands at a bewildered Crowley. “Zzztrike him down,” the Demon Prince drawled. “Be the first demon to zzzpill angel blood and take down your most detezzzted enemy in front of all of Heaven and Hell.”

At the center of it all the humans watched, aghast, as the prompting of their former bosses began to sink in. Crowley turned and his gaze met Aziraphale’s. They glared across the distance at each other like true adversaries. 

“No, you can’t!” Anathema cried. 

“This is the final trigger,” Adam whispered to himself. 

For a split second the demon and the angel regarded the humans with curiosity, but in the next moment Gabriel and Beelzebub both snapped their fingers. In a blink the humans found themselves transported half a mile away. 

“Shit!” Anathema growled as, in the distance, Crowley and Aziraphale began to approach one another. 

“They’re gonna fight each other?” Brian asked, staring with his mouth wide open.

“If their bond isn’t broken yet, that’ll certainly do it,” Wensleydale surmised.

“We’ve got to stop them!” Pepper exclaimed, pointing up at the sky. It was swirling faster now, and a quivering crack was splitting it at the apex, breaking bit by bit by bit.

“I don’t know that getting in between a brawl between an angel and a demon is a particularly smart idea,” Newt pointed out.

“We don’t have a choice!” Anathema shot back. She waved her hands up at the splitting sky above. “The world ends anyway if we don’t do something soon!”

Adam listened to them all with his jaw clenched. He looked down at Dog, standing loyally beside him and looking up with worried eyes. 

“Let’s go. We have to remind them.”

The others looked to the Antichrist. “Remind them of what?” Anathema asked.

Adam and Dog began moving forward without bothering to see if the others were following. “Of who they really are.”

"Wait!" Newt insisted. "If we try to get back in there those other two are just going to send us away again, maybe too far to have a hope of getting back this time."

Adam growled as he whirled back toward the other. Dog had a snarl on his lips to match his master's. "We're wasting time! We have to do something, now!"

Half a dozen sets of human eyes (and one set of the canine variety) glared around at each other, frightened and frustrated ready to leap down each other's throats at the drop of a hat. 

Then Pepper blinked, and a wide, slow smile spread across her face. "Adam..." she began, "do you think you can use your power to make it so Beelzebub and the other idiot don't see us? Just long enough for us to get up behind them?"

Adam frowned, but nodded. "I think I can do that."

Pepper's grin spread even wider, and her eyes were burning with the same fire they'd had in them when she'd kicked War right in the shin. "Then I have a brilliant idea."

* * *

Aziraphale stared across the short distance of space between himself and the demon who had broken his resolve time and time again over the millennia. His hand squeezed around the hilt of the sword Gabriel had given him; he felt the divine heat warm his face as the blade burst into flame. 

Crowley stared back at the face of the angel who had tormented and tortured him over the course of many cruel millennia. He accepted the deceptively thin sword Beelzebub handed him and felt it hiss and crackle like ice being blasted by pulses of steam.

They approached one another.

_ If I defeat him, _ thought Aziraphale, _ I’ll actually be able to do some good in this world becau- _

_ If I defeat him, _ thought Crowley, _ I’ll be free to go about business and actually enjoy the- _

There was a moment during which both hesitated for just a moment as the reality of the situation slammed down on both of them.

_ Oh, wait...there won’t be a world anymore… _

Then, the hesitation hardly even acknowledged, they both continued forward with a single thought:

_ I’ll still be free of him. _

They stopped a sword’s length away from one another.

Aziraphale fought to keep his face passive. He should want this. _ Need _it, even. He could be rid of this blight on his existence. Yes. He nodded to himself. This was a good thing. He would either strike an evil monster from existence, or, well...it wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

Crowley fought to stop his hands from trembling. He should be delighting in this. Savouring the opportunity to take vengeance on his merciless tormentor. Yes, this was perfect, really. Either he’d rid himself of the psychopath who had made his life a _ true _hell, or...he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.

On either side of the pair, Gabriel and Beelzebub stood with the entire hosts of Heaven and Hell standing at attention behind them. The two schemers watched with satisfied grins, oh so pleased with the way they’d orchestrated such a fitting end to their respective traitors.

“I suppose it’s time to finally end this, serpent,” Aziraphale said, tone grim.

Crowley nodded once, his amber eyes fully blown around anxious, slitted black pupils. “S’pose it is, angel.”

One couldn’t have speculated as to who moved first. Even the hosts of celestial beings in attendance couldn’t have caught the infinitesimal twitches of the two forms in the middle of the tarmac. They simply weren’t fighting...and then they were. Their blades cracked together and the sky above trembled and roared. 

It immediately became a dance, neither one giving purchase, each flowing between attack and defence flawlessly, but hardly putting their hearts into either.

“You’re holding back,” Aziraphale accused with a perfectly executed thrust.

“So are you,” Crowley growled back without any bite to it.

They spun away from each other only to spin back in, blades gleaming and glinting as their blows rang out like bomb blasts across the battlefield. 

Crowley was lithe and wiry. Aziraphale was fast and powerful. The angel was by far the better swordsman, but the demon was creative and unpredictable. Against all odds they seemed perfectly matched. A tense anticipation of who would come out on top quivered through the combined forces of Heaven and Hell as they watched. 

Aziraphale’s arms flexed beneath his well-loved clothes, strength hidden for thousands of years by an illusion of softness. “I will strike you from existence this day, foul fiend,” he shouted between strikes. “Your evil will sully the universe no longer!”

Crowley’s form thrummed with passion and desperation, and a desire for everything to just _ be over already. _“Ha!” he spat back, parrying low, swinging high. “That’s rich coming from you, angel! Your antics make mine seem like good deeds!”

Another swing, a parry, a step back, and an indignant yell: “I beg your pardon?!”

A hard thrust that brought them face-to-face, their swords crossed and trembling between their bodies. Aziraphale would have easily overpowered Crowley from this position if not for the cry of accusation that startled him so.

“Oh, just gonna pretend that you haven’t left holy scars on almost every inch of me, are you?”

“I _ what?! _” Aziraphale exclaimed. It was only a brief moment, but it threw the angel off his guard, which left the demon’s follow up strike unchecked.

Aziraphale stepped back from the blow, a splash of blood brightening against the cream of his collar as it ran hot down his face and neck.

High above, the sky cracked and swirled and split. 

Crowley had half a heartbeat to feel triumph, and then the angel was on him with renewed fervour and fury.

The flaming blade came down again and again, sparks striking Crowley’s skin and making him hiss out in pain. Above them a kind of rumbling grew, a destructive thunder, a portent. Aziraphale struck and struck and struck, driving Crowley back, driving him down to his knees. He was righteous fury, blue eyes glowing with a timeless divinity. The angel put all his strength into a blow that snapped the demon’s blade in two and sent the pieces flying in opposite directions.

Crowley let his body sink to the ground, shoulders slumped, gasping for air. He thought he should probably be terrified, but he supposed he’d always known that this was how it was going to turn out. Foolishly, he felt a sad smile play across his lips. “Guess this is it then,” he swallowed, spreading his arms to offer his body. “Time to finally strike me down.”

Aziraphale lifted his blade. His anger ran as red as the blood from his cheek, but it was being slowly drowned by a dozen other warring emotions. Frustration. Fear. Disappointment. Depression. He couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t voice it. He just knew - _ knew _ \- that he wasn’t ready for this to be over.

“No,” he said, voice shaking just a little. “Get up. Fight. Do something.”

Crowley’s arms slowly lowered. “Do what?” he asked. “You’ve beaten me, angel.” He looked so tired, so...so ready to give up. “It’s done. Finish it.”

The angelic rage reared up again, but this time it manifested in the form of hot tears rolling down to mix with the blood in his eye. “No!” he shouted. “No, it’s not over! Get up! _ Do something! _ Do something, or-” His voice cracked.

Crowley looked up with eyes that had gone very small and scared. “Or what, angel?” he asked, hardly a whisper.

The world around them had gone frighteningly quiet, but a soft voice gave the answer to the demon’s question.

“Or he’ll never speak to you again.”

Aziraphale’s sword arm dropped. As one, he and Crowley turned their heads to the group of humans who had reappeared before them. Shock and confusion rattled through them both as they were met with the sight of their respective superiors struggling helplessly against celestial shackles painted in dozens of protective sigils. A rather amused-looking Anathema and a rather nauseated-looking Newt held tight to the chains. 

The boy who’d spoken, Adam, took another step forward. “That’s what you said last time,” he spoke to Aziraphale. Then to Crowley, “And the idea of that was so unacceptable to you that you actually _ stopped time _ to give us all a chance to figure something out.”

Aziraphale stared, openly and unseeing. “Do we...do we know you people?”

“Don’t listen to a thing they-” Gabriel cut himself off with a rather whiny, “Ow!” when Anathema flicked him hard behind the ear. 

Adam took another step. He was nearly between the two now. “You fought together to stop the end of the world,” he told them. “You’d been together since the beginning and didn’t want to lose the Earth...or each other.”

Crowley was shaking his head, but there was a reluctance in the motion. “Sorry kid, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said. He sound terribly unsure of himself. “We’re...we’re hereditary enemies. Can’t stand each other. Ever since he-” He waved a hand in Aziraphale’s direction. “-threatened to smite me on the day we met.”

Aziraphale frowned, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. “There you go making up nonsense again!” he exclaimed. “The day we met, _ you _yanked my wings back and threatened to throw me off the Wall!”

Crowley made all manner of bumbling, stuttering, abortive sounds before finally exploding, “I did not!”

“Oh for goodness sake,” Newt groaned. He waved an exasperated hand to shoo away Beelzebub’s flies. “They’re false memories, implanted by these two.” He held up the Demon Prince’s chains and gestured to where Anathema was lifting Gabriel’s.

“Liezzz,” Beelzebub growled. “The humanzzz are juzzzt trying to zzzave themzzzelvezzz!”

“Nu-uh!” Brian cried out. He stepped up beside Adam and crossed his arms. “All they want is their stupid war!”

“Impudent little-” Gabriel grumbled.

Pepper cut him off with a kick to the knee that made the Archangel yelp. “After we went through all the trouble of stopping it the first time too!” she growled. “And you two helped us!” she aimed at Crowley and Aziraphale. “A bit,” she added after a moment’s consideration.

Aziraphale looked entirely lost. “We...stopped Armageddon?”

“The first one, yes,” said Wensleydale, pointing up, “but your fighting has started a second one, so we’d really appreciate if you’d make up already.”

Crowley and Aziraphale looked up and seemed stunned to notice the state of the sky for the first time. Splits in space were spreading across the fabric of existence above them, inching in every direction like a spiderweb crack in a windshield as the car hurtled down the highway. 

“_ We _ caused _ that _?” Aziraphale gasped.

“Yes, by allowing your soul bond to become fractured,” Anathema explained.

“S-soul bond?!” Crowley choked out. He turned an incredulous eye on Aziraphale and gaped when he noticed - now that he was looking - the single black feather on the angel’s right wing. “What the _ literal Hell?! _” he cried. 

Aziraphale followed the demon’s gaze, gasped, and whipped his head back, eyes searching, finding the single white feather on the demon’s black wings.

“Think hard,” Adam begged them. “Doesn’t any of what you remember about each other seem...wrong?”

Amber eyes met blue. They frowned at one another, thinking, remembering…

Strange feelings.

Painful disappointment.

Undeserved faith.

Unbidden questions.

A deep, ever-growing sense of loss and sadness…

Without realizing it was happening, their gazes upon one another began to soften.

“Enough of thizzz!” Beelzebub cried. “Cloud-dweller! Itzzz time for Plan B!”

Gabriel nodded. “Disappointing, but we haven’t much choice.”

Together the Demon Prince and the Archangel whistled; a high, painful pitch that reverberated across the airfield, causing the air to vibrate and the humans to wince and whine. 

“Wait, Plan B?” Newt cried over the ringing in his ears. “What the heck is Plan B?”

“We _ had _hoped to hold on to them a bit longer,” said Gabriel with a menacing grin. “You know, so whoever wins the war could dole out some more punishment.”

“But to keep the Apocalypzzze on track, total obliteration will have to do. There can be no bond if there izzz no one to be bonded.”

It all happened far too fast for anyone to have been able to stop it.

In a crack of lightning the Archangel Michael appeared to Crowley’s back, holding a massive jug of water. In a burst of hot sulfur Hastur, Duke of Hell, appeared to Aziraphale’s back, a ball of fire in his hand.

Crowley saw Hastur. Aziraphale saw Michael.

With each others’ names screamed out in panic and pain, the demon and the angel dove for one another, wings spread, as their enemies attacked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	9. Gradient Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wave of holy water, and a blast of hellfire...inescapable. And yet...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! And this is, basically, the scene that I had in mind that wound up as an entire fleshed-out fic...lol Enjoy!
> 
> FYI, yes, this is technically the end, but there's an epilogue that will be up shortly. ^_~
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _Forever changed their Fates will be_ **

** _Beheld to neither Dark nor Light_ **

* * *

It was gloriously calm.

Crowley took a deep, cleansing breath. It smelled of flowers and fruit and new grass, but it somehow also smelled of old books, hot cocoa, and a warm hearthfire. 

He opened his eyes slowly, wary, but couldn’t help the way they shot open when he found himself entangled with Aziraphale, their arms and wings wrapped around each other. The angel was looking back at him with the same kind of shock on his face, but Crowley noticed he made no attempt to move away.

“Are...are we dead?” the angel whispered.

“Angels and demons don’t die,” Crowley reminded him, as though he hadn’t just been thinking the exact same thing. “We just...cease to be.” He scrunched up his nose in thought. “And I don’t know about you, but I feel very much...not...ceasing to be.”

Aziraphale lifted an eyebrow as he worked his head around that. “But...but Michael threw holy water at you.”

“Hastur hurled a ball of hellfire at  _ you _ .”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “And you protected me.” His voice was soft, breathless. The realization felt like an epiphany. 

“You protected me too…” Crowley’s face indicated that he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “We should still be dead. Gone, I mean. Forever gone. It only takes a bit of either. There’s no way we managed to fully block each other from so much as a drip or a spark.”

Aziraphale frowned and, deciding that the mystery wouldn’t be solved just by sitting here, slowly lifted the wall of his wings. Crowley did the same and felt the physical tremble of Aziraphale’s gasp.

They were in a garden. A glorious garden, not unlike  _ the  _ Garden, but there were no walls enclosing and sheltering this garden from the world.  _ This  _ garden  _ was _ the world. It stretched as far as the eye could see and farther. Everywhere, in every direction, there was verdant beauty.

Currently they were on their knees at the edge of a small apple orchard, but they could see pears and pomegranates farther ahead. In one direction there were rose of rose bushes and lilacs and flowering crab trees in full bloom. In another, tulips and daisies and petunias dotted the ground beneath an expanse of cherry blossom trees. There were ferns and ficases, dahlias and dragonweed, and some curious specimens neither demon nor angel had ever seen before. 

“What is this place?” Crowley sighed with awe. 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale replied, and he was smiling a brilliant little smile. “But it feels wonderfully familiar…”

They walked together for a time, neither really cognizant of the fact that their hands were entwined, fingers laced tight and warm together. 

The tips of their wings skimmed through the high, fragrant grasses as they walked. Crowley ran his hands along flowing vines while Aziraphale chuckled at bees and butterflies and ladybugs who flocked to kiss his skin before flying off again.

A scent wafted in the air, drawing Crowley’s attention. He gently guided Aziraphale to a row of vines peppered with little round, pinkish fruit in bundles.

“Are those some kind of grape?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley deftly plucked two of the fruit from the vine and handed one to Aziraphale. He popped the other in his mouth as the angel did the same. Both sets of eyes lit up at the flavor.

“It’s like it was cross-bred with strawberries!” Aziraphale exclaimed, delighted.

Crowley had a slow smile creeping across his lips. “This fruit would make a fabulous wi-” He stuttered to a stop, the smile disappearing under a look of surprised remembrance. “Wait…” he muttered. “I feel like I”m having a breakthrough…”

Aziraphale didn’t respond. When Crowley turned to see why it was to find the angel staring, wide-eyed, out into a field before them.

Aziraphale moved first, but Crowley had already begun to follow without having made the conscious decision to do so. They walked side-by-side, fingers tightly woven together, and stepped out into a field of thousands upon thousands of beautiful, fully-bloomed stargazer lilies.

“I remember this…” Aziraphale whispered. His voice was almost cracking with the mixture of emotions. “I’ve seen this. It’s...it’s…” A little shudder went through him. He turned wide eyes to Crowley and his gaze flicked up to their two wings, side-by-side, each sporting a mismatched feather. Then his blue eyes, soft and full of wonder, came back to meet Crowley’s amber ones, warm with passion and hope. “This is  _ your  _ garden,” the angel finally managed to say. “The garden of your heart and soul.”

Before he’d even heard the words Crowley was already shaking his head, but he had a radiant smile on his face. “No, angel...it’s  _ our  _ garden,” he corrected. His voice was filled with the unwavering faith of a child. “It’s  _ our  _ garden.”

Aziraphale’s lips parted. His eyes glistened in the sun. Slowly, as though terrified to break the spell, he raised his free hand to Crowley’s cheek and sighed at the way the demon leaned into the touch. “It all felt  _ so wrong _ ,” he said as a few warm tears fell down his face. “A part of me  _ knew  _ that it couldn’t really be you. Even at the end, when I felt completely broken and had every reason in the world to want to take you down...I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I was lancing away a part of myself. The most important part.”

Crowley made a little choked sound, part laugh, part sob. He sniffed back his own tears while also lifting his free hand to swipe away Aziraphale’s with trembling fingers. “To be honest, part of me wanted to lose the fight on purpose,” he confessed, “because even after everything I couldn’t bear the thought of striking you down.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale admonished, but there was more wonderment to his tone than anger.

The demon grinned at the angel, but there was a sad glint to his eyes. “I just wish...I just wish my head wasn’t all muddled. I know that this-” He squeezed the hand that was holding Aziraphale’s. “-is right, but my memories are still full of awful, painful things.”

“Mine too, my dear,” the angel all-but-whispered. “But...perhaps if we just have a little faith in each other…?” He trailed off as he leaned forward, popping up on his toes to close the height distance between them. Crowley dipped down to meet him and their lips brushed together; soft, slow, sweet.

Distracted as they were, the angel and the demon failed to immediately notice the glimmering column of light that shone down around them from a cloudless, blue sky. That was, at least, until Crowley pulled back from the kiss with a gasp, panicky fingers drawing up to dig into his own chest. 

I can feel  _ Her _ ,” the demon croaked. His chest felt ready to explode from the sudden, stark  _ fullness  _ that he hadn’t felt since long before the creation of the Earth. He trembled from the weight of it and felt tears springing to his eyes. 

Aziraphale took both of Crowley’s hands and held them tight, never once letting his gaze leave his demon’s face. “It’s okay, my love,” he soothed. “I’m right here. I’m right here beside you.”

Crowley clung to Aziraphale as if expecting to be forcibly ripped away. He was visibly shaking, awed and terrified and unable to process any of the possibilities of what was about to happen, because they all seemed likely to result in being taken away from his angel, the one thing holding him together.

Then Aziraphale did something that - even had his memories not been scrambled - Crowley would never have expected supposing he’d lived to the end of existence and back again.

Aziraphale, angel of the Lord, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, and Principality stationed on Earth, wrapped his wings around his demon and looked up into the sparkling light with eyes glinting in defiance.

“You can’t have him!” his voice boomed, steady, strong, and sure. “Not anymore! He belongs to me, and I won’t let you take him away!”

Crowley’s jaw dropped in shock, admiration, and not an insignificant bit of mind-numbing terror.

But, at the angel’s words a stuttering pulse wove down through the column of light: quick, short bursts of pleasant, ticklish warmth. It almost felt like...laughter. Crowley and Aziraphale had a moment to blink their fleeting foolishness at one another, and then their minds were filled with the most immaculate sound.

It was a gentle breeze and a raging storm, birdsong and rainfall, the cry of a wolf howling lonely in the night and the laughter of children full of innocence and promise. It was older than the farthest corners of the Universe, yet somehow still fresh and new, and it spoke in a language that defied logic or linguistics. 

Yet Aziraphale and Crowley understood, because they’d been  _ made  _ to understand.

_ No more hurt for you, my children. I believe you’ve experienced quite enough. _

Aziraphale opened and closed his mouth several times. They he looked down at Crowley, who was staring back at him with a look of, ‘What the Hell do you expect from me?!’

“Um, yes, well, uh-” the angel sputtered. “Rather.”

Crowley felt that he might be ill.

The light ‘chuckled’ again and pulsed with extra warmth this time, as though wrapping the pair in a soothing embrace.

_ It is time for a change, children. Time for you both to be free from fear. I give you a gift, penance for all you have been through. _

Crowley raised his eyebrows at Aziraphale. The angel shrugged.

_ I shall repair what has been destroyed through the meddling of others, and you, my sweetest children, will be undeniably free. Enjoy it. Do good with it. And never fail to tend your wonderful garden.  _

Aziraphale released Crowley’s hands only so that he could wrap his arms around his demon’s waist and pull him closer. Crowley, shy and red as a fresh rose, did the same. “We will,” Aziraphale promised. “We will...Mother.”

“T-thank you,” Crowley added with a whisper. It was unclear whether he was speaking to Aziraphale, God, or both.

_ Return home now, children, and let us show them all what you’ve become by believing in one another. _

The pillar of light grew warmer and warmer, until it was almost burning, and with that heat the angel and the demon felt the millennia of discord and dismay melting away to reveal the truth beneath. Crowley and Aziraphale sighed twin sighs of relief, remembrance, and deep, everlasting love as their lives returned to them. And as the light became almost too bright and too hot to bear, they smiled, gazing into one another’s eyes, and wrapped around each other - arms and wings, heart and soul.

* * *

They opened their eyes to more than few startled and horrified gasps. 

Crowley looked at Aziraphale with raised eyebrows, noting that both of them had holy water dripping down their noses and limp, soaked strands of hair. Aziraphale raised his right back, gesturing to the dark, hellfire burn marks on each of their jackets. 

“We really did get hit,” said Crowley, disbelief written in his eyes.

“That can’t be!” came Gabriel’s indignant cry. “You said it wasn’t real! That they’d pulled some kind of trick!”

“It makezzz no zzzenzzze!” Beelzebub snapped back. “I’m zzzertain it was a trick!” 

Aziraphale grinned at his soulmate, who was smirking in return. Together they unfurled their wings and stood before their tormentors together, stronger than ever. 

“It  _ was _ a trick,” said Crowley, all teeth and brilliant amber eyes. “ _ That  _ time.”

“This time it’s real,” added Aziraphale in a prim, proper tone. “A gift from God Herself. Neither Heaven nor Hell can harm us anymore.”

They’d expected a reaction, but were more than a bit bemused when what they received for their declaration was a bevy of open-mouthed stars from angel, demon, and human alike. Across the expanse of the airbase, the grounds, and beyond, the gathered armies of Heaven and Hell were so silent with shock that for a moment Crowley thought he’d accidentally stopped time again.

“I think we broke them, angel,” Crowley murmured.

“I think you might be right, my dear,” Aziraphale replied with an eyebrow raised.

It was Newt, of all people, who managed to find the thread of brainpower required to speak for them all. “Your wings!” he cried, pointing. “For goodness sake, look at your wings!”

Crowley and Aziraphale blinked at the human, glanced at each other, and turned as one to peer back at the wings spread out behind them, interwoven together with their closeness.

For a brief moment all they saw was a mess of white and black feathers, and neither of them realized what had changed. Then Aziraphale gasped and, slowly, the two pulled far enough away from each other for their wings to properly separate.

Aziraphale’s wings, white as snow where they sprung from his human form, were black as night at the tips of the primaries; Crowley’s reversed the pattern with black against his body and white at the edges of his wingspan. The length of their four wings revealed a glorious gradient, a magnificent progression of white to black, and black to white. 

They stretched their wings wide and stared at each other, joy and wonder in their eyes.

“It’s just like you told me.” Adam’s voice drew everyone’s attention. The boy had a hand woven into the fur on the top of Dog’s head and was smiling, almost seeming proud. “You two aren’t Heaven and Hell incarnate. You’re a little of both, literally. You’re something new and different and just...you.” 

Crowley’s face had gone red again, and Aziraphale’s smile could have knocked the sun from its perch in the sky. 

“So...you’re both part angel, part demon?” 

It was Michael’s voice, and it somehow came as a surprise to the others that she was still there. She looked as though she was struggling to settle somewhere between disgusted and impressed. “And that makes you both  _ officially  _ immune to holy water.” It wasn’t posed as a question.

“Hellfire too, apparently,” Hastur added while taking a few very deliberate steps backwards. 

“H-how?!” Gabriel practically exploded. 

Aziraphale’s tone was nothing short of a gloat. “It seems that the Almighty judged our bond Herself and decided it required something of a- He paused, considered, and grinned. “-endorsed.”

Gabriel sputtered out a litany of incoherent noises. Beelzebub was buzzing so violently it sounded as if a helicopter was approaching.

All across the land, the armies of Heaven and Hell were chattering. It was a constant, steady hum of conversation. Aziraphale could sense waves of shock, panic, disgust, and fear, but also ones of awe, wonder, curiosity, and respect. 

“Seems like you’ve got some dissension in the ranks,” Crowley said to the respective Heads with a cheeky smirk.

Michael frowned and clucked her tongue, glancing warily back at the rising din from the angel side. “Yes. I- I suppose I’d best go get things in order, as it appears that the Apocalypse is cancelled  _ again _ .” She glanced up at the sky, and for the first time Crowley and Aziraphale took note of the fact that it was clear and blue once again. Not a single cloud sullied the view, and in the crisp November breeze there wasn’t a single sign of a crack in reality to be seen.

Michael raised a hand, fingers pressed together, but stopped at the sound of a panicked, practically mewling voice.

“Wait!” Gabriel whined. He held up his hands, still cuffed in the shackles that were being held by a rather vindicated-looking Anathema. “Little help here?”

Michael cocked an eyebrow. “What do you expect me to do?” she asked. “You and the Fly Prince there designed those shackles specifically to be impenetrable by angel or demon alike once closed.” She shook her head and waved a hand around at the gathered humans and not-quite-demon-or-angel celestials. “They’re the only ones who can free you now.”

Gabriel looked absolutely aghast, much like a spoiled child who’d just found out that, yes, his parents  _ were  _ serious about cancelling Christmas this year. “But- You-! You’re not just going to  _ leave  _ me with them, are you?” he exclaimed.

Michael offered him a little ‘what else can I do?’ kind of shrug. “This entire mess was your plan,” she pointed out. “You and the Fly. And clearly a few missteps and underestimations were made, particularly in the case of assuming the humans would be powerless to help. And on top of all that, it appears that God herself has intervened and chosen the victors of this particular battle. So, to be perfectly frank, I think it’s actually rather fitting that they-” She gestured again to the gathered, specifically to Aziraphale and Crowley. “-should get to decide what to do with you.”

Gabriel’s eyes went wide and he made a choked noise, but no further argument was forthcoming.

Michael, somewhat surprisingly, approached Aziraphale and Crowley and gave a short but respectful bow. “In Her name, I offer apology for my part in this...whatever this was,” she said, prim and straightforward. “I don’t believe I’ll ever understand this thing-” She waved a hand toward their gradient wings and seemed to be trying very hard not to look disgusted. “-between you two, but your dual immunity and those wings can sure only be proof of the Almighty’s, er-”

“Endorsement,” Crowley helpfully supplied, squeezing Aziraphale’s hand and garnering a grin from the angel.

Michael’s lip twitched. It very nearly could have been the beginning of a smile, but it was gone as soon as it had come. “Yes, rather.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll be off now.” And, tilting her head toward Aziraphale. “Heaven won’t trouble you any longer, by my word.”

Aziraphale gave a sharp nod and, with perhaps a tiny bit of overconfidence, stated, “See that it doesn’t.”

Michael did smile then - just a minute one - before snapping her fingers and vanishing.

During the exchange Beelzebub had been staring rather heatedly at Hastur from where Newt still held their chains. Now the Demon Prince was outright growling, eyes practically red with rage.

“Don’t you even dare  _ think  _ about it, Hazzzter!”

For a moment it appeared that Hastur might actually heed the Prince, but then he took notice of the way Crowley and Aziraphale were watching him and clearly decided against it. “Uh...what wank-wings said,” he stammered. Then he was gone, with Beelzebub looking genuinely shocked that he’d dared to disobey.

A few short heartbeats later, both the angelic army of Heaven and the demonic army of Hell had faded back Above and Below. The airbase and surrounding area was, in the blink of an eye, the same size it had always been - that is, far too small to have ever logically contained millions of celestial entities just moments prior.

The children immediately rushed to Crowley and Aziraphale, with Anathema and Newt trailing behind with their prisoners.

“Would I be correct in assuming that you lot rescued us?” Aziraphale inquired, unable to keep the impressed tone from his voice.

The kids were all smiles and prone to their biological imperative to all speak at once, so Anathema leaned over them to pass the angel (or was that even what he was anymore?) the piece of parchment from her pocket. “Agnus had one last prophecy for us,” she told him with a smile.

Crowley leaned over Aziraphale’s shoulder and they read together. Looks of confusion became bemusement and eventually happiness and wonder. 

“I like the bit about ‘beheld to neither Dark nor Light’,” Crowley offered. “Has a nice ring to it, that.”

Aziraphale hummed, pleased. “Oh yes, quite. That may be my favorite bit, in fact.”

Crowley shot a toothy grin at Anathema and pointed a long finger at the prophecy. “Hey, Book Girl, think we could have this to frame and hang in the bookshop?”

Anathema laughed heartily. “Sure thing.”

The children, ever rambunctious and curious, had begun circling to celestial pair to get a good look at their new wings, when a haughty voice trying very hard not to sound small and pathetic spoke up.

“So what are you going to do with us?”

All eyes turned to Gabriel, who had somehow found himself huddled rather closely to Beelzebub. The two were clearly trying to stand tall, but were almost pitifully curled in on themselves as though the warded shackles were physically dragging them down. 

Aziraphale clicked his tongue thoughtfully and leaned toward Crowley. “Hmm...I don’t know. What do you think, my dear?”

Crowley pretended to give it significant thought. He tapped a finger against his chin and made soft humming noises while the Archangel and the Demon Prince fidgeted. “Well, we  _ could  _ give them a taste of their own medicine. Play loose and fast with  _ their  _ minds. Put them through their worst nightmares…” He paused while Gabriel and Beelzebub shared a quick, horrified glance at one another before he decided, “Nah. We’re not as big a pair of pricks as them.”

Aziraphale playfully swatted Crowley’s arm and admonished him. “Language dear, the children.”

“Forgone conclusion, Aziraphale,” Newt muttered while suppressing a grin. 

Crowley clapped his hands together suddenly, causing everyone a little jump. “Kids!” he said. “That’s perfect! Such clever things, kids. That’s the ticket!” He swept his white-and-black wings up and back, collecting the kids in their span and herding them together in front of him. “Antichrist and friends,” he addressed them (and earned an eye roll from Aziraphale), “What do  _ you  _ think we should do with these two?”

An even greater sense of shock and fear built in Gabriel and Beelzebub at this prospect, but they seemed too alarmed to make further argument.

The children considered Crowley’s question with all the deep, careful thought of a businessman reading over the details of the most important deal of his life. 

Pepper was the first to speak. “Well, obviously they need to be punished for trying to start another war.”

“And Apocalypse,” Brian added.

“Also, trying to kill Crowley and Aziraphale,” Wensleydale piped in.

“Yes yes, those things too,” Pepper agreed. “And it seems to me that those shackles take way their powers, is that right?”

Adam saw where she was headed and nodded, a truly devilish smile sneaking across his face. “Yes...with those shackles on they’re hardly more than human. So they should keep them.” He grinned toward the gaping pair, all teeth. “At least until one of us decides they’ve had enough.”

It was Beelzebub’s turn to stammer out a panicked debate. “No! That’zzz- You can’t!”

“They can, and we will,” Aziraphale interrupted in a stern voice that shut the Demon Prince down immediately. To Anathema he asked, “My dear, would it be possible to add to the spell, to fix it so that those of us gathered her are the only ones capable of removing their bounds?”

“To ensure they don’t trick any other humans into helping them?” the witch concluded. “Easy. We’ll remove the chains but leave the cuffs and bind them to the will of this group alone.”

Crowley’s grin indicated he was enjoying this  _ far _ too much. “Very interesting idea, kids! Anything else you’d like to add?”

Adam had crouched down to wrestle a panting, yipping Dog onto his back to rub his belly. Now he lifted his eyebrows as a thought occurred to him. “They should also stay on Earth.”

The reaction was visceral. Crowley and Aziraphale seemed genuinely shocked by the suggestion, and the two prisoners themselves all but exploded in an anxious, angry stream of shouts, pleas, and empty threats. It went on for several long moments before Crowley snapped his fingers and gags appeared in the offenders’ mouths.

“Care to explain your reasoning, Adam?” asked a piqued Aziraphale.

Adam approached the gagged and bound pair, who looked down at him reproachfully. “They have absolutely no respect for humanity,” he explained. “They’ve been perfectly happy to throw us all away for the chance to prove whose gang is best, and they underestimate us at every turn. So I think we should keep them here, on Earth, with those cuffs suppressing their powers. Make them live like us for a while and see if it improves their attitudes.”

By the time he was done the other children were nodding in agreement and the not-quite-angel and not-quite-demon were beaming with pride.

The Archangel and the Demon Prince, however, were practically shrieking behind their gags. 

Newt raised an eyebrow at them both. “You could always work together to survive,” he pointed out with a twitch of his lips. “For mortal enemies you two actually seem to get along strangely well, you know.”

Beelzebub’s eyes went comically wide and Gabriel made a startled gagging noise around the intrusion in his mouth.

“Oh you really  _ do _ ,” Crowley shot at them with a grand smirk. “It’s kinda gross, actually.”

“You do finish each other’s thoughts quite a lot,” Wensleydale pointed out, and at that Crowley nearly doubled over with raucous laughter. 

“That is perfect,” cried the demon as he wept with mirth. “I knew you kids wouldn’t let me down.”

The children grinned, the prisoners scowled, and Anathema and Newt snickered. Aziraphale gazed fondly, lovingly, at his partner, his love, his soulmate.

“Well, with that decided,” said the not-quite-angel, “I think there’s one thing left to do, my dear.”

“Wassat, angel?” asked the not-quite-demon.

Aziraphale raised his wings high and stretched them wide, reveling in his returned memories and the knowledge that the Almighty had repaired the damage they’d unknowingly done to the world. 

“I rather think it’s time for a celebration.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A celebration. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last little blast of cuteness for the road. ^_~  
I hope you all enjoyed this fic! I had a blast writing it, and actually managed to avoid incorporating smut for a change! Are you proud of me? lol  
(FYI, I would totally be up for post-fic smutty one-shots if anyone is interested...lol)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, commented, and kept me going! You're all lovely, lovely people!
> 
> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

** _So heed ye Light, and heed ye Dark_ **

** _Though great of might ye armies be_ **

** _True strength is lost amongst them both_ **

** _So Look and Listen, Hear and See_ **

* * *

The celebration was thoroughly enjoyable.

Anathema, upon spying the rings and learning of the pair’s intentions to simply have a party with friends, had insisted that they partake in the “whole shebang”. Newt and the children had wholeheartedly agreed, and it didn’t take much for Crowley and Aziraphale to relent.

They skipped a few steps, miracling the required paperwork and bestowing Anathema herself with the power to perform the ceremony, but overall the pair found themselves rather pleased with the proceedings. Doing things the official  _ human  _ way seemed, after everything that had happened, much more important now than it had been before.

The entire affair took place at the Ritz, which Crowley rented out for an entire night, much to Aziraphale’s utter delight. Anathema and Newt brought the Them (whose parents were all amenable thanks to a particularly powerful bit of angelic persuasion). Shadwell and Madam Tracy arrived home from their vacation in time to attend as well. There were a smattering of other guests - humans the pair had been well-acquainted with for some time - but the most important attendants were their wonderful “Apocalypse Family”. 

Gabriel and Beelzebub technically attended as well, sulking in a corner with a truly concerning number of bottles of wine and their fancy ‘bracelets’ covered by long sleeves. They clearly weren’t enjoying themselves, but frankly, had nowhere else to go and hadn’t quite figured out what to do with themselves yet now that they were trapped on Earth.

Anathema had insisted that Crowley and Aziraphale abstain from seeing each other the night before and day of the ceremony, which had seemed entirely ridiculous to the pair at the time. However, they ended up thanking it for her afterwards, when they saw each other for the first time, Aziraphale in a black suit with white trim, Crowley in white with black trim. Each thought the other was breathtakingly beautiful. Newt thought the suit thing was a little too on the nose. Anathema thought, rather vocally, that Newt could keep his thoughts to himself if he wanted to sleep in their bed that night.

The ceremony itself was short and sweet. Crowley and Aziraphale repeated much of what they’d previously vowed to one another during their private bonding ceremony. The gathered humans smiled and fawned over how darling they were. From their corner Gabriel and Beelzebub gagged; they were heartily ignored by everyone thanks to a little miracle from Crowley that made them invisible to all senses for the duration of the proceedings. 

The adults heartily enjoyed the massive quantities of gourmet food and complimented Crowley on the spectacular wine he’d supplied with Aziraphale’s permission (“We’ve got  _ thousands  _ of bottles, my dear!”). The children were practically glued to the extravagant ice cream bar Aziraphale had commissioned especially for them, which contained  _ fifty different flavors  _ and all the toppings one could possibly imagine. 

As the evening wore on they took to fits of dancing (spurned on by the drinking), and the happy couple were delightedly amused to find that nearly everyone in attendance was as terrible at the activity as they were. They mostly swayed during slow songs and bounced like drunken kangaroos during fast ones, while the Then threw about various strange poses that Crowley explained (with a snicker) came from a popular electronic video game he’d helped inspire.

At one point an extraordinarily drunk Demon Prince had dragged a shocked and bewildered (and also mightily drunk) Archangel to the dance floor for a slow song, and my, hadn’t that raised a few eyebrows. Crowley and Pepper had snapped about a thousand pictures between them with their mobiles, and a second batch of even more when Beelzebub had rested their head against Gabriel’s chest and, apparently, fallen asleep there on their feet.

Aziraphale had graciously offered the use of the bookshop for a place to lay the Demon Prince’s head and had been quite pleasantly surprised when Gabriel had mumbled a proper thanks and insisted on watching over the sleeping demon until they woke.

“It kinda makes me want to shove a knife through my own brain rather than say it out loud,” Crowley had said, “but there may actually be something happening there.”

Weird though it did seem, Aziraphale couldn’t help smiling at the possibility. “You never know,” he’d said. “Maybe someday there will be more bonded pairs like us.”

Now there was an interesting prospect.

As the end of the celebration approached, their lovely human friends presented Crowley and Aziraphale with a gift: the keys to a cottage in South Downs that they’d rented for the couple for a week. Aziraphale had tried with futility to turn down the gift as being “far too much”, but the humans persisted. Gifts, Newt had said, were an important tradition. So were honeymoons, Madam Tracy had added. And besides, pointed out Anathema, the cottage belonged to Brian’s aunt, so they’d gotten a great deal. Plus, Shadwell gruffly chuckled, did they really want to go back to the bookshop on their wedding night knowing Gabriel and Beelzebub were there?

That was how they came to be standing outside of an adorable little blue cottage, covered in verdant, flowing vines, at four in the morning after all their guests had stumbled off home. 

They’d stopped short in the driveway, each wondering whether or not to carry the other over the threshold. When they’d looked at each other and realized they were both thinking the same thing, they’d burst out laughing and dragged each other through the door.

“Oh it’s a lovely little place, isn’t it?” Aziraphale sighed. He gazed out into a lovely garden out back from the kitchen window. “Don’t you think so dear?”

Crowley, who was pouring some more wine to make up for sobering in order to drive them here, placed down the bottle in favor of wrapping his angel in a warm, enveloping embrace. “Mmmhmm,” he agreed. “But not a fraction as lovely as you, my angel.”

Aziraphale wiggled, a delighted smile on his face, and turned so that they were facing each other. For a few moments they just gazed into one another’s eyes, soft blue and vibrant amber. Then Aziraphale lifted a hand to Crowley’s cheek and tenderly brought him down for a kiss. It was soft and sweet, and tasted of wine and wedding cake, but there was also something else there than hadn’t been previously. Something different that Crowley couldn’t quite place until his demonic side felt the sudden rush of lust directed his way. 

The (former?) demon pulled back with a gasp and wide eyes. 

Aziraphale immediately lowered his head, a flash of red burning across his face. “Sorry, dearest,” he stammered, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean- I mean, it’s such a terribly  _ human  _ thing, completely unnecessary for beings like us, and of course it’s hardly something I require to be happy, all I need is you after all, and-”

Crowley closed the distance between them to recapture the (former?) angel’s lips. He pressed them together with purpose and not an insignificant bit of lust of his own, and when he pulled back again Aziraphale let out his own little gasp, face hot. 

“Angel,” Crowley said with swollen lips. “I just didn’t think angels  _ did  _ that kind of thing. But if you do, and you  _ want _ , then I’m very, very much on board.”

“Oh,” was Aziraphale’s soft, surprised reply. “Oh...oh, good.” Then they were kissing again, and the angel’s fingers were curled around fistfuls of the demon’s hair. Crowley’s hands found their way to Aziraphale’s suit jacket, popping the buttons he found there one by one.

Then he stopped quite suddenly, pulling away from his angel with a concerned look, lower lip clamped between his teeth. “I just want to be sure,” he responded to the angel’s silent question. His face was full of love, concern, and loyalty. “This...this isn’t too fast, is it?”

Aziraphale’s heart almost exploded with love. “Oh, my sweet demon,” he crooned. “My gorgeous, clever, amazingly warmhearted husband, my love, my soul…

...it will never be too fast ever again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy my writing, please check out my other stuff by browsing my blog over at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com!


End file.
